MURDER WITH PICTURES
US, 1936, 69 minutes, Black and white.
Lew Ayres, Gail Patrick, Paul Kelly, Ernest Cossart, Onslow Stevens, Anthony Nace.
Directed by Charles Barton.
Title refers to the work of journalists, newspaper photographers and a camera emptied of its mechanism and a gun installed as a murder weapon.
With so many journalists and their crowding the courts as well has interviewing suspects, the dialogue of the film has the Front Page Story kind of hype and wisecracks from the journalists. This is particularly the case with Lew Ayres as a journalist after a story, quick and smart-talking, encountering the suspect and becoming infatuated with her, doubting, helping (including hiding her in his shower), on the track of incriminating photos. Gail Patrick is the lady in question, playing her with a touch of glamour as a femme fatale. Paul Kelly has a role as an enterprising journalist who comes upon the truth but is killed by the lethal camera. Onslow Stevens is the villain.
The film opens with Onslow Stevens and his crooked lawyer in court, the plaintiff being freed and going to an apartment to celebrate where the femme fatale is present – and there is a back story about the death of her father and his being tricked by the villain. The lawyer is shot, the presumption being that the woman did it but later photographs (taking a long time to develop) reveal that the weapon was the camera.
In the meantime there are police investigations and interrogations, discussions with the newspaper and editors, the woman being taken by the villain and then being in an accident, the reporter thinking she was dead but her being kept in hospital, the newspaperman working out what was happening, going to confront the villain, car chases – and the revelation that the woman was still alive, a pursuit and the discovery that the killer was actually the assistant to the reporter, using his camera as a weapon, the brother of the man the villain was accused of killing.
The film is directed by Charles Barton who went on to direct many comedies, especially Abbott and Costello films, and work with Ma and Pa Kettle.
