There are a lot of positive reviews for this old mystery crime flick here on the IMDb, which is why I think one of Miss Patricia's (Virginia Brissac) lines quoted above seems so appropriate for me. What exactly am I missing?
Granted, I was somewhat entertained by this movie in the same way I'm entertained by Charlie Chan, Mr. Wong and Boston Blackie films of the same era. But how do you make sense out of some of the elements offered here, like a working phone in an abandoned night club building that's been shuttered for thirty years, a skeleton in the basement of the same building that was never discovered, and the very same club virtually engulfed in flames only to be visited the very next day by our intrepid crime doctor Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter), searching for a killer that will exonerate a young bookkeeper (Lloyd Bridges) from a murder charge.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot - doesn't anyone else think it's unusual that Ordway would be climbing a ladder set up against the Burns home at two in the morning searching for clues, and two of the residents just as handily greet him once he's inside. All of this almost makes the murder of Walter Burns seem inconsequential by comparison, because I'm too busy wondering who came up with this stuff to pass off as a crime thriller.
Well, for whodunit fans this one has a few red herrings and you'll have to outguess a number of principals in the picture who each have their own idea about who murdered old Burns. The reveal at the end of the story doesn't come off as a complete surprise; if you followed along attentively you'd have pegged him as a prime suspect. But I'm not telling, I'm still trying to fit all the other stuff that happened into my head.
Granted, I was somewhat entertained by this movie in the same way I'm entertained by Charlie Chan, Mr. Wong and Boston Blackie films of the same era. But how do you make sense out of some of the elements offered here, like a working phone in an abandoned night club building that's been shuttered for thirty years, a skeleton in the basement of the same building that was never discovered, and the very same club virtually engulfed in flames only to be visited the very next day by our intrepid crime doctor Robert Ordway (Warner Baxter), searching for a killer that will exonerate a young bookkeeper (Lloyd Bridges) from a murder charge.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot - doesn't anyone else think it's unusual that Ordway would be climbing a ladder set up against the Burns home at two in the morning searching for clues, and two of the residents just as handily greet him once he's inside. All of this almost makes the murder of Walter Burns seem inconsequential by comparison, because I'm too busy wondering who came up with this stuff to pass off as a crime thriller.
Well, for whodunit fans this one has a few red herrings and you'll have to outguess a number of principals in the picture who each have their own idea about who murdered old Burns. The reveal at the end of the story doesn't come off as a complete surprise; if you followed along attentively you'd have pegged him as a prime suspect. But I'm not telling, I'm still trying to fit all the other stuff that happened into my head.