Three Hours to Kill

A superior B-picture from the last years of Werker's 30-plus years in the business, a catalogue of routine assignments broken by highlights including The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), He Walked by Night (1949), the prototype serial-killer film noir, and a string of interesting minor Westerns from the '50s. Andrews plays a gunslinger accused of murdering his fiancée's brother and all but pulled to pieces by a small town lynch mob including many of his so-called friends. He's back in town now and wants to track down the real killer. The film neatly slots together the dual time frames and generates a strong sense of bitterness at the speed with which Andrews feels himself betrayed.