THE SPANISH CAPE MYSTERY

US, 1935, 73 minutes, Black and white.
Donald Cook, Helen Twelvetrees, Berton Churchill, Frank Sheridan, Harry Stubbs, Huntley Gordon.
Directed by Lewis D. Collins.

This is an early Ellery Queen mystery. He is played by Donald Cook. The film opens with his father investigating a robbery, calling in his son, who very quickly solves the case by explaining that the jewel thief, expecting to go out the front door of the shop and transfer the necklace to his accomplice, went out the back door and slipped the necklace into the jeweller’s pocket!
Then he goes to California with a judge friend for a holiday and immediately finds a woman tied up in the house they are to rent. There has been an abduction, followed by a murder, with a bump vicious local sheriff vainly thinking he has solved the case, several times, accusing each member of a family in turn and thinking they are the murderer. He is introduced to Ellery Queen, has read his work, but says that that is all theoretical and he works on evidence.

There is a very rich family assembled, in order to contest a will, the various members of the family or claimants being killed. The father of the family thinks that they are all sponges. He is accused, his wife is accused, even the woman tied up, the daughter, Helen 12 trees, becomes a suspect.

Ellery Queen can be quite sardonic in his remarks, mocking the sheriff, attracted to the young woman, sparring with his judge friend.

As the victims increase, and the staff are all called in to give testimony, especially a snapping butler, the detective works out whodunnit and sets the young woman up to trap the killer – who turns out to be the mad uncle who was abducted, who wants to eliminate all the claimant so that he could can get the money himself.

In many ways, this is a very old-fashioned whodunnit, in the style of the 1930s with books by Girls Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie and other writers.

Of its time, entertaining.