The Judge (1949)

 I chose to watch 'The Judge' the other night because it was free on Prime, I could use it as an excuse to watch another film with the same title in the near future (2014's 'The Judge'), I was in the mood for something black and white and it's really short (70 minute run time). I wasn't paying a ton of attention to it at first, until it started to get weird and then it got my interest. 

'The Judge' appears to be more or less an independent feature, put out by a company called Emerald Productions, and I can see now why no major studio at the time would have made it. The judge of the picture (Jonathan Hale) is only a minor supporting character, though he provides the narration. The film is actually about a lawyer name Martian Strang played by Milburn Stone. Stone had a forty year career in front of the camera, half of which was spent playing Doc Adams on 'Gunsmoke', and he's quite good in this picture, though the supporting cast is largely poor to mediocre. 

So here's the story. A man Strang got off on an a murder charge kills again, a young boy. Strang feels the man is obviously crazy, which he is, and that he shouldn't stand trial but go to the mental hospital. Only the court appointment shrink fines him competent to stand trail and Strang's got to defend him again. Around this time Strang finds out that the shrink is having an affair with his wife. So he goes home to kill himself, and we learn that the man's brother was also a suicide, only before Strang can pull the trigger he is interrupted by his wife. Which is counter productive for her because she and her lover have been trying to push Strang to end his own life. 

Upon realizing this Strang decides he wants revenge. He aggress to take the case of a man who killed a police office, having some inside information that will allow him to get this killer off on a technicality. Now Strang knows that volunteering to defend this man will cost him what is left of his reputation. Only he doesn't care, tells the killer that he will defend him for free in exchange for an unnamed favor to be called in after he is acquitted. Now it appears that Strang wants this man to kill his wife and/or lover. But he actually has that man kill HIM, after planting evidence to make it look like the court shrink was his murderer. That is how this movie ends, Strang is dead and the man he framed is executed. This is a trippy picture, especially for its time, I don't know how I'd not heard of this before, and how it doesn't have a cult following. 

This movie was a big surprise to me, it's not great but it's just so strange, a real 'how did this get made' mystery of a movie. **1/2