Dark Shadows (1944)
Article 5788 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-7-2020
Directed by Walter Hart and Paul Burnford
Featuring Henry O’Neill, Morris Ankrum, Arthur Space
Country: USA
What it is: “Crime Does Not Pay” short

A police psychiatrist is called in to figure out which of a doctor’s patients is responsible for his murder.

I’ve covered one of the other shorts in MGM’s “Crime Does Not Pay” series because it nudged into the realm of horror in a story about a phony medium. This one nudges in with a story about a homicidal maniac who doesn’t know why he kills and is therefore a psycho-killer, which also puts us into the realm of horror. It’s a mildly interesting short, with its most striking element being a strange arrangement of desk drawers at the site of the murder, a touch which ends up giving a clue to the identity of the murderer. Granted, it’s a little hard to add more meat to the story with only twenty minutes to play with, but it plays out well enough.