STRANGERS OF THE EVENING

US, 1932, 70 minutes, Black and white.
Zasu Pitts Eugene Pallette, Lucien Littlefield, Theodore Von Eltz, Warner Richmond, Harold Waldridge.
Directed by H.Bruce Humberstone.

The title of the original novel of this film was The Illustrious Corpse – which seems a much better and enticing title.

This was a first feature film for prolific director, H.Bruce Humberstone, child actor, who directed small budget films in the 1930s and 40s, moving into much more broadly popular comedies and musicals in the 1940s and 50s, then to television.

This film has its moments as well as his rather slow patches. It is entertaining in the first 15 minutes with so many complications of plot, again and murder, disguising the body, getting another body for deceiving the public – and then, so many things going wrong at the mortuary, the young attendant panicking and fleeing, the doctor conducting seemingly illegal experiments clashing with his potential father-in-law, the audience assuming that he was murdered because he was unseen in close-up, the doctor marrying his fiancee and fleeing to Chicago. There is also a disfigured body in a side street, two passers-by becoming involved, delivering the body to the mortuary and then ringing the police. And then the police get involved.

In retrospect, the screenplay is clever enough and the audience has to be on the alert to work out who is who and what is what.

A quarter of the way into the film, Eugene Pallette turns up as the inspector, something of a hard case. Also turning up is a man who has lost his memory and his being blamed for the death of a businessman – with the final irony turning up that he is the businessman. With his amnesia, he has encountered a landlady with romantic aspirations, played by Zasu Pitts.

Further complications, another dead body, the same men walking along the street finding the body…

But it all works out in the end. A rather slight supporting feature from the early 1930s.