Really Surprised!

Excellent, a Must See

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

"The Missing Juror" was one of Columbia's "filler" movies, usually made in about 12 days for around $100,000 and designed to fill out a double bill. Budd Boetticher, the director, gave the film flair and individuality. It was only his second directorial credit (his first was a Boston Blackie mystery "One Mysterious Night") and he had fond memories of the movie and it's stars. He thought Janis Carter was wonderful and could have been a top star if only she had learned to "play the game". It also really advanced the career of George MacCready along the ranks of memorable movie villains.At a suburban railway crossing, a shadowy figure props the body of a man behind the wheel of a car as a train hurtles into it!! The murdered man is the fifth person to die from a jury that condemned an innocent man to death. Newspaper man, Joe Keats (Jim Bannon) has always been convinced of his innocence but even though there are appeals and submissions, Harry Wharton (MacCready) is found guilty. When the first juryman is shot, he confesses to Keats that Wharton has been framed and as a result of new evidence he is released. But Harry is a changed man, imprisonment has sent him insane and while incarcerated in the State Mental Hospital, he sets fire to the ward and hangs himself - or does he???Keats is still investigating the juror's deaths and comes to know one of them, Alice (Janis Carter). She is not at all interested in him but is interested in Mr. Jerome K. Bentley, the mysterious jury foreman, who has a strange fetish for the number 12!!! Unlike a lot of the reviewers I thought it was a pretty good thriller - not Noir but definitely not mediocre!! Of course Keats takes an immediate dislike to Bentley but still takes up his invitation of a visit to the steam baths - Big Mistake!!! They are met by Colly (Mike Mazurki), the proprietor who proceeds to give Bentley his nightly neck massage while reciting Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" - as if that isn't enough to make Keats suspicious, he almost comes to a steamy end in the actual baths. Meanwhile Bentley has lured Alice to his home on the pretense of pretending to hire her to redecorate it - Keats can't go running to the rescue as he has been mistakenly jailed so it is up to Alice's faithful room-mate Tex (Jean Stevens) - who is smarter than the two leads and should have been on the case from the start. She makes a few phone calls which lead to a happy ending. Jim Bannon, after starting out in thrillers ("The Soul of a Monster", "I Love a Mystery") quickly found a home in the West, particularly TV, with shows like "The Range Rider" and "The Adventures of Champion".

With a largely anonymous cast and a plot that is nothing to write home about, this little film from the 40's is still worth watching mainly for its noirish atmosphere and George MacReady's wonderful over-the-top performance as a wrongfully condemned man gone mad.MacReady plays Harry Wharton, a man who is wrongfully convicted of killing his sweetheart and sentenced to hang. He sits on death row for months while reporter Joe Keats, who senses Wharton is innocent, tries to track down the real killer. Hours before the execution, Keats comes up with the evidence that points to another and Wharton is pardoned. However, no pardon will fix the fact that Wharton's mind has snapped. He is admitted to a mental hospital, but nothing eases his misery and he ultimately sets fire to his room before hanging himself. His body is burned beyond recognition. Now, months later, reporter Joe Keats is refocused on the Wharton case. This time because half a dozen of the Wharton jurors have died mysterious accidental deaths in a short period of time. Keats believes someone is avenging Wharton's wrongful conviction and subsequent suicide, but he can't prove it. Along the way he falls for a beautiful female juror who doesn't care to cooperate with his investigation.If you watch it, you're going to know what's going on immediately. There is really no mystery here. However, it is amazing to watch what Columbia could do in the field of drama/noir/mystery during the 40's and 50's without nearly the resources of the other major studios or the star power. All the stuff you expect in such a film is here - the all night diner where reporters seem to congregate and the proprietor who's always handing out sage advice, the know-it-all reporter 40's style and his antagonistic relationship with a boss that still appreciates the reporter's craft and insight, the classy girl that the reporter sets his sights on and somehow winds up the center of the drama, and the mystery criminal that runs circles around multiple police departments and is only tripped up by one blood-hound of a journalist.Recommended for fans of post-war and almost post-war fare.

....which is so opposite reality as to be intentionally misleading."Juror" is NOT noir.It IS a poorly-written B "mystery", with little of that, but plenty of under- and over-acting.You can't even call it a pot-boiler because it never catches fire.The only reason it's "rarely seen" on TV these days is that only TCM would show it. (But you'll never see Osborne or Mankiewicz introducing it.)With the exception of classics like "The Wizard of Oz", "Gone With the Wind" and "It's a Wonderful Life", no network today will broadcast movies over 30 years old in order to attract that all-important 18-35 demographic.This clunker has nothing in common with "Stranger On The Third Floor" and it's an insult to say it's a twist on "And Then There Were None.""Juror" was just a paycheck for Budd Boetticher, who moved on to direct and team with Randolph Scott for some truly great 1950s westerns.Watch them, not this.

**SPOILERS** You get lost watching"The Missing Juror" within the first ten minutes in that we already see that the convicted murderer Harry Warton was exonerated of his crime just minutes before he was supposed to be hung for it! This all came out when the star witness against Wharton private dick George Szabo gave a "death Bed" confession, after he was gunned down by an unknown assailant, that he set poor Wharton up by the person who's really responsible for what he was convicted of!Instead of finding out, and having arrested, just who the actual killer was we instead have the jurors who convicted Wharton of murder being murdered themselves. Wharton who had since gone mad after his release was put into a lunatic asylum where in a short period of time he ended up killing himself by both hanging and arson. Wharton seemed to have flipped out and killed himself because he just couldn't stand the shame of being incarcerated in the asylum as well as the torture he suffered, that drove him insane, of being put on death row for the last six months of his life.In the movie we have hot shot reporter Joe Keats the man who's investigated reporting got Wharton freed trying to find out just who's responsible for murdering those jurors who had unjustly convicted him. Again no one, the police the courts and even Joe Keats, were not at all interested in finding out who was the man who actually murdered the person whom Wharton was convicted of murdering! Even though with his last dying breath George Szabo identified him which resulted in the court, and prosecuting D.A, overturning Wharton's original death sentence!As we watch, mostly off camera, most of the jurors in the Wharton murder trial get knocked off it doesn't take a genius to figure out just who's doing the knocking. The killer is so obvious to everyone, with his flimsy and unconvincing disguise, that by the time he finally reveals himself to juror, and reporter Keats' girlfriend, Alice Hill you felt like screaming at him, on the TV screen, "What the hell took you so long"!Hard to stay awake throughout the entire film because you can see right from the start that it's not at all interested in who the killer who framed Wharton really is. All we get to see is ace crime reported Joe Keats run around in circles making a complete fool of himself and almost getting killed, in an overheated steam room no less, chasing the elusive killer! Who's about as elusive, to everyone but Keats and his girlfriend Alice, as an 800 pound gorilla stuffing himself with stacks of bananas in an outdoor or open air fruit market!