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During surgery, the light goes out, and when it goes on again, one of
the doctors, Doctor Morton (Addison Richards) is found dead, stabbed by a
surgeon's knife - one that bears the initials of Doctor Thornton (Frank
Reicher), a once brilliant surgeon who's long lost his talent for surgery
due to botched up surgery on his own arm - performed by Doc Morton. Seems
like a pretty good motive, but why would he use a weapon that can be
traced back to him that easily? Anyways, soon two other suspects emerge,
two young doctors fighting over assistantship at the hospital, Doctor
Clayton (Bruce Cabot) and Doctor Kennedy (Roland Drew), and while Kennedy
is arrogant enough everyone would really want to pin the murder on him,
Clayton is so helpful to the investigating Sergeant Spencer (Thomas E.
Jackson) that Spencer soon doubts he's fully innocent. Then another murder
happens, this time Thornton. It was made to look like suicide and as if
Thornton wrote his confession when he was killed, but apparently someone
threw a surgeon's knife (another of Thornton's) at nurse Lila (Joan
Woodbury) when she entered the room and then fled the room. The
fingerprints on this knife as well as the one that killed Morton belong to
Clayton - a bit ridiculous since during surgery he wore surgical gloves,
so it would have been pretty hard for him to even be able to leave his
prints if he needed to (which apparently he absolutely wouldn't have) ...
but it's quickly cleared up by his girlfriend Carole (Helen Mack) that he
handled this specific set of knives only the other day. Soon after that,
the hospital's handiman Tony (Frank Puglia) is found, his face doused in
acid, and the resident doctors have a hard time to save his life even -
but when they manage, the aftereffect is he cannot speak and cannot see,
and his hearing has been completely gone for years. So the one man who
could identify the killer is ... wait a minute, what if dead Doc Morton's
irises are attached to Tony's eyes? Then he couldbe of help after all. Of
course, keeping him alive the night before the operation is critical,
because there's still a killer on the loose, and sure enough he strikes
again, but Clayton's ingenuitysaves his life - also during surgery ... but
once Tony's to identify the killer, he points at Tony ... but no, it's the
person in the mirror behind Tony, nurse Lila, who was Morton's
as-good-as-ditched lover who only wanted revenge on him - and got deeper
into it as she went along, to a point where she had to fake that attempt
at her own life ... Murder in the White Room will
probably never get an award for originality, but it's a well-enough
written and executed B-mystery with a medical background, that actually
manages to make the most of its hospital locations and themes, also
narratively, without confusing audiences not into medical dramas, and
moves along at a steady enough pace to iron over the occasional
inconsitency. Now add to that well-developed characters and a competent
ensemble cast and you're pretty much almost there - which is not to say
the film doesn't have its downsides, as for example the killer is only
pulled out of the proverbial hat, and a simple jealousy solution is a bit
of a letdown for a complex medical thriller, plus some points (red
herrings) are emphasized upon too strongly while some of the comic reliefs
could have been a little more downplayed, but even taking this into
account, you get if nothing else a good hour of genre entertainment.
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