Using bombs on a timer to create terror: perhaps the writer was prescient, or perhaps little changes regarding man's motivations; just the technology improves. In this episode, a mild mannered little man appears and demands the bank president hand over $10,000 or else three large bombs will go off destroying the town of Porter. A lot of money back then, well worth over $250,000 in today's money.
Fred Kettle (Lloyd Corrigan) claims to have invented a timer that will set off the bombs, and what doesn't blow up will burn down. But if paid, he will reveal the locations of the bombs and how to defuse them. He also carries a smaller version of the bombs that he will detonate should anyone try to halt him as he leaves town. Hoby refuses to take Fred seriously, until a bomb set in an old barn actually goes off. The bank president is willing to hand the money over, but Hoby wants to try to trick him first. He hopes to change all the clocks to make it appear the deadline time has just about past, thus scaring Fred into revealing the locations. The plan seems doomed but Tenner Smith manages to pull a fast one on Fred. I won't give it away, but it works.
What is of interest to me is seeing Lloyd Corrigan as the villain. He plays off his long-established stereotype as a rotund little man who supplies comic relief. Corrigan had a long career in film and then TV usually providing a laugh. But I will always remember him playing both type and against-type in The Thin Man Comes Home, the fifth installment of the William Powell/Myrna Loy series. Corrigan played the easy-going, affable, befuddled, chubby Dr. Bruce Clayworth. Who in this movie was the murderer.
As long as there are aficionados of The Thin Man, Lloyd Corrigan will be remembered.
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