The best of the Whistler series—the eerie studies of fate and the art of being at the wrong place at the right time—features a sharper-than-usual Richard Dix as a double-crossing private eye pulling deceptive moves to get his hands on a client’s MacGuffin. The Whistler originated as a popular radio series, and director William Castle brought its first cinematic incarnation to the screen in 1944. With its remarkably edgy use of voiceover narration—spoken by the unseen Whistler, a kind of merciless, all-seeing doppelgänger of God—the films deliver a thrilling, if sometimes disorienting, barrage of plot twists, often introduced every ten minutes.