He Walked By Night 1948: Film-Noir [1:18:55] BluRay

About this film

He Walked by Night is a 1948 American police procedural film-noir, directed by Alfred L. Werker and an uncredited Anthony Mann. The film, shot in a semi-documentary tone, is loosely based on the real-life actions of Erwin "Machine-Gun" Walker, a former Glendale, California police department employee and World War II veteran who unleashed a crime spree of burglaries, robberies and shootouts in the Los Angeles area between 1945 and 1946. Roy Morgan (Richard Basehart) is a burglar who listens in to radio police calls, allowing him to stay one step ahead of the cops. After Morgan kills a police officer, Sergeants Brennan (Scott Brady) and Jones (James Cardwell) have little success in putting the clues of the case together. But when Jones is wounded in a shoot-out with Morgan, Brennan employs all facets of detective work, including forensics and informants, to find the elusive and clever criminal. During production, actor Jack Webb met the film's police technical advisor Marty Wynn and was inspired by a conversation with Wynn to create the radio program Dragnet, which later became the first modern police television drama. Goofs: A revolver ejects its spent casings only if the shooter do…

Directors & creators

Bryan Foy, Robert Kane

Subjects

semi-documentary, film-noir, burglar, shootout, dragnet, jack webb

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