Kid Glove Killer (1942)

Samuel Hinds has just been elected mayor. Lee Bowman has his ear, but is actually in league with an shady figure (John Litel). The beaten body of Hunter Turnley is found, and Bowman goes on the air to demonstrate the mayor's upright character and goal of wiping out corruption. Bowman goes to check with Van Heflin, the lab expert, who good-naturedly orders around his beautiful assistant, Marsha Hunt.  Heflin pointedly is devoted to his job, and does not notice Hunt, but Bowman does. They go over the information they have with crusty Homicide Captain Cliff Clark. They find Schnauzer hair on the ropes that bound Turnley. While Bowman is boasting of the administration cleaning up the racket, hoods are extorting money from Eddie Quillan. He goes directly to see the mayor, but is warned off by the police.

The mayor is calling Bowman into account for having taken out an insurance policy which had policies that he ought not to have been able to afford. He tells Bowman he is going to start an investigation of him. Bowman goes straight to Litel, but gets no help from him. So he manufactures a bomb and puts it on the mayor's car. In making it, he has to clip a piece of wire. Then he picks up Hunt and takes her to a nightclub. Heflin shows up late and gives a clever pantomime of cooking a trout. In the meantime Hinds' car explodes. Heflin and Hunt go to work. The cops learn that Quillan was at the mayor's house and grill him. Bowman plays the good guy and promises to help him, but tells the police that he is the guilty one. Heflin's evidence seems to confirm it, and Bowman is ready to charge him, but Heflin demonstrates that circumstantial evidence can be deceiving by showing him burned matches that seem to match.

The local political fathers (amid clouds of cigar smoke) want Bowman to run for mayor, and tell him that a conviction of the mayor's killer would assure his election - and he has designs even beyond that. He asks her to marry him, but she needs time. And Heflin is beginning to show a few signs of jealousy.

Heflin is honing in on the clippers that cut the wire used in the explosion. He deduces that it was an amateur that made the bomb. Hunt tells Bowman that everyone who bought a particular kind of shells is to be examined. Bowman scrubs his fingernails, and passes the microscope test. Hunt has been trying to find the type clippers that cut the wire, and Bowman's office is hard after Quillan. Heflin finds fibers from the sacking the bomber lay on, which will be in his hair. None of the evidence pans out against any of the suspects, and the pressure is on Clark and Heflin. Then Heflin finds an impression on a note pad that makes his brow furrow. He calls iin Bowman to demonstrate a test he is going to use to break the case. He pretends to dump something in his hair accidentally, then vacuums it, and in the residue is the evidence that Bowman is the bomber.

Bowman and Hunt are making honeymoon plans. But she mentions that Heflin has the killer, and from what she says he figures that he is the suspect. He feigns an appointment so he can leave. He gives he the keys to his car, on which is the clipper he used on the wire. She tests it, and it matches. Bowman comes in with a gun to get the evidence. Heflin and Bowman fight, and the police come in to take Bowman away.

Six weeks later. Hunt comes into the office from her vacation. He has her look in a microscope. The slide says, "I'm the jerk you hypnotized. Will you marry me?"

Cute, fast-moving movie.




Heflin and Hunt


Hinds