Inspector Elk (Gordon Harker) is a detective with Scotland Yard. Currently, in London, there is a gang of criminals whose leader is an evil mastermind known as The Frog. The Frog communicates with his henchmen via microphone. From a secret location his voice is transmitted through a giant statue of a frog with blinking eyes. The Frog keeps a tight rein on his minions and rewards disloyalty with death. Elk, and his aide, Maggs (Cyril Smith), have been assigned the duty of stopping him.
Dale Sandford (Hartley Power) is a police detective from Chicago, Illinois. He is in England to learn investigative techniques. The commissioner (Charles Carson), unsure that Sandford is actually who he claims to be, decides, to Elk’s chagrin, to assign Dale to work with Elk and help him in his investigation, thereby keeping an eye on the brash American.
Elk’s investigation takes him to a waterfront bar run by Mum and Golly Oaks (Una O’Connor and Charles Lefeaux) and their ward, Lela (Rene Ray). When Dale meets the feisty Lela, he becomes smitten. Lela, at first is not interested in the American detective, but he is persistent. Also after Lela’s favors are a slightly slimy guy named Dandy Lane (George Hayes) and another hoodlum named Dutchy Alkmann (Meinhart Maur).
Elk is now tasked with finding the elusive Frog and bringing him to justice. His list of suspects includes the slightly amusing “Chicago Dale”. Elk believes that the gang he is searching for is headquartered at Mum’s bar and that it is a front for a fencing operation.
“The Return of the Frog” AKA “Nobody Home” was released in 1938 and was directed by Maurice Elvey. It is a British crime film and a quota quickie. The film is a sequel to the 1937 film “The Frog”. It was based on the 1929 Edgar Wallace novel “The India-Rubber Men”. Wallace wrote several novels based on the character Inspector Elk. The story was also done as a West German krimi called “The Inn on the River” 1962.
My copy of the film is old, scratchy and muffled so it’s a little difficult to hear everything going on or maintain one’s attention during the movie. Despite the creakiness of the film, it was not all that bad. A little confusing, yes, but that’s normal for an Edgar Wallace film. Sprinkled throughout are amusing quips and a few unusual characters. Harker, as Inspector Elk, is wonderful as usual.
There are a lot of small aspects to the story that remind me of scenes from other Wallace films, and not just the krimi version “The Inn on the River”. I have a feeling that Wallace used similar scenarios in many of his writings.