MURDER ON THE CAMPUS

US, 1933, 71 minutes, Black-and-white.
Shirley Gray, Charles Starrett, J.Farrell MacDonald?, Ruth Hall, Maurice Black, Edward Van Sloan .
Directed by Richard Thorpe.

Murder on the Campus is one of the hundreds of short films produced during the 1930s as supporting features. Many of them were murdered mysteries like this one.

Whether this is an accurate picture of life on an American campus in the early 1930s, it does not seem to matter. Police are investigating the killing of a student with minimal credentials, accepted because of athletic skills, but in relationships. A newspaper reporter is helping the police with investigations.

There is a student who went to see the murdered man and is the chief suspect. There are quite some tangles with a singer supplementing her income at a club, a gambler who runs the club, and her girlfriend and roommate.

Helping the investigations is a professor, a scientist with an interest in the case.

The dead man was locked in belltower, there was very little time for the murder to be committed, there are many clues and complications, especially with the senior and the gambler. However, it is the professor, a jealous man who did it.

The film is an early work by Richard Thorpe who was to be one of the most regularly employed directors at MGM during the 1940s and 1950s.