Jerry Miles (Wally Brown) and Mike Strager (Alan Carney) are radio hosts and have a radio crime show called “The Crime of the Week”. The crime stories for the program are written by Ellen Brent (Anne Jeffreys) and are based on true crime events. For assistance Ellen gets guidance from a criminologist, Latimer Marsh (Lionel Atwill).
What they don’t know is that Marsh is in reality a criminal mastermind and murderer that goes by the name of The Cobra. The Cobra has been committing various crimes in the city. His latest crime is the kidnapping for ransom of a respected businessman, John Saunders (Forbes Murray). Police Lt. Rick Campbell (Marc Cramer) and Lt. Gilley (Ralph Dunn) are assigned to the case.
The current radio show is about the kidnapped John Saunders. Many of the theories of the crime written by Ellen are eerily similar to the facts in the case. The Cobra and his assistant, Stone (Bela Lugosi), are concerned that Ellen’s writing is very close to the actual crimes, including her prediction that Saunders would be found murdered.
Marsh decides that he needs to do some damage control and get rid of Ellen. At one of the tapings, he shoots a poison dart at the radio duo but misses and hits another announcer, Tom Jennings (Phil Waren). Marsh tries to frame the murder on Ellen but that doesn’t work. Ellen suspects that Marsh is the Cobra but has no proof. She decides to air on the program who she believes is The Cobra and writes a script for Miles and Stranger’s next show. In a panic, Marsh decides that he needs to get rid of Miles and Strager at any cost.
“Genius At Work” was released in 1946 and was directed by Leslie Goodwins. It is an American low budget comedy crime thriller.
The movie is only about an hour long. There isn’t much to it other than some skits done by Brown and Carney wrapped in a crime plot. It’s not a horrible movie; in fact, it’s typical of the comedy duo style films done in the 40’s. Even Brown and Carney are not totally annoying. It’s also quick and rather fast paced. In addition, you get to see Lugosi in a somewhat comedic role. Something I always enjoy seeing him do. Here he is paired up with Atwill as part of a sinister duo. They play it straight but sometimes with comedic results.
Wally Brown and Alan Carney were separate and distinct comics but were sometimes teamed together in films. They did eight films together for RKO studios between 1943 and 1946. As a team they were considered RKO’s answer to Abbott and Costello.