mark.waltz
Satisfactory B comic melodrama involves warnings from a murdered man for a company of actors gathered at the theater where he was killed not to continue with the play that they are rehearsing. It's up to novice producer William Gargan (really a detective) to find out what's up, dealing with the usual theatrical eccentrics of varying egos, some of them rather suspicious in character. The dead man's voice even haunts the company through a radio show, and certain incidents turn the theater into a haunted house giving more reason to keep that ghost light on. At just over an hour, this film rushes by, often comical, sometimes annoying (El Brendel's cloying Swedish accent), suspenseful in the quiet shadows, and acceptable for its mysterious atmosphere. Jan Duggan gets the bulk of subtle laughs as a hammy character actress, with Dorothy Arnold and Irene Hervey trading barbs as rival leading ladies. It's obvious to me that each plot move is carefully mapped out, making each twist seem deliberately written and not often fresh or natural. But as B movies go, this is nonstop thrills and some surprising laughs which will keep you involved.
tedg
I watch these old mysteries not because I expect to find a good one. They rarely are, but often you can see a free art experimenting with different cinematic tricks while no one yet had a settled cinematic vocabulary. And here is a good one.This is a mystery about the murder of a ruthless radio reporter. We see the murder occur just as he is about to make an announcement that will ruin some innocent people. Oh, but wait. A few moments later we learn that what we have seen is a play, a play within the movie.In fact, the movie itself is an adaptation of a play. Essentially all the action occurs in a theater. To fully appreciate this, you need to know that the mystery genre made its leap from cheap paperbacks to movies via radio. That first scene where things slide effortlessly is not as sophisticated as say, The French Lieutenant's Woman. But it is more impressive for the time. As the story goes on, it becomes more ordinary, but I'll mark this opening as a milestone in a nesting vocabulary.
Michael_Elliott
House of Fear, The (1939) ** (out of 4) Lazy, routine and by the numbers remake of The Last Warning from Universal. The story is pretty much the same as an actor gets murdered during a performance and then years later the cast is brought back together to try and trap the killer. This certainly sinks to the "C" level in Universal's library and it comes off very lazy compared to the original film. Several scenes are redone here but they don't come off nearly as good as the original film. The cast is also rather boring and bland but the 67-minute running time does go by fast.
Norm-30
An actor, John Woodford, dies on-stage during a performance of a play. His body is taken to his dressing room, where it disappears. The theatre is closed for over a year, and rumors that Woodford's ghost haunts it spread all over Broadway.A detective (posing as a producer) rents the theatre and attempts to present the same play, but all sorts of "ghostly occurences" happen to try to thwart his plans. (Woodford's voice coming over a dead telephone, his face appearing on the pitch-dark stage during a police vigil, more murders, mysterious notes from the "dead man", etc).All-in-all, a "different" mystery with good acting; if you watch the film intently, you can figure out who the murderer is (but, it's DIFFICULT!). Highly recommended. (btw....this film has NOTHING to do with the Sherlock Holmes film of the same name).
AD
