BEFORE MIDNIGHT


US, 1933, 63 minutes, Black and white.
Ralph Bellamy, Jean Collyer, Claude Gillingwater, Bradley Page, Betty Blythe, Arthur Pierson, George Cooper, Joseph Crehan, Otto Yanaoka.
Directed by Lambert Hillier.


A businessman believes that he is going to die if the clock stops before midnight. He explains this situation to friends – and dies.

The film opens with the police chief talking to a younger man explaining that he can offer him a case that defied detection. The film then goes into flashback.

Ralph Bellamy is the detective called in to investigate, with a stooge kind of associate called Stubby. However, the detective is quite astute. It emerges that the man who died had worked in China, amassed a fortune, worked with his lawyer, has a secretary, has a hostile former wife who comes to visit, and has a friend from the past living in the house. There is also a Japanese servant. Plenty of suspects.

However, as the detective investigates and the doctor seems suspicious because of the nature of the death, he lets the doctor off suspicion. The Japanese servant, however, behaves suspiciously – but is killed.

The older resident of the house makes a contract with the detective to give him a considerable amount of money if he can solve the case. Eventually, the detective does. However, it is the man making the bet who is the murderer – with a rather complicated scenario that he is the father of the secretary, that has swapped identities with the murdered man, that the murdered man was about to swindle him. And the detective gives him the opportunity to kill himself.

The director, Lambert Hillier, directed many of the earlier Tom Mix westerns. And, commentators have pointed out that the Japanese actor, Otto Yanaoka was interned 10 years later when the Japanese, even American citizens, were rounded up and interned during the war.