MURDER AT MIDNIGHT

All US, 1931, 69 minutes, Black and white.
Aileen Pringle, Alice White, Hale Hamilton, Leslie Fenton, Brendan Hurst, Kenneth Thompson, Robert Elliott, Clara Blandick, Tyrell Davis.
Directed by Frank R.Strayer.

This is one of many films directed by Frank R.Strayer during the 1930s, most of them thrillers. He had begun directing films in the 1920s and continued until the late 1940s, filming a number of the Blondie series and, in his last years, directing a number of religious films.

This is an early sound film, rather stagily presented, rather formally acted. However, it begins with something of a shock and then an immediate twist, followed by another twist: there is a scene of marital infidelity at midnight, which is revealed as a play in a charade, then the victim in the charade is actually killed.

The setting is a rather large party so there are plenty of characters present and a range of people under suspicion. First of all, there is the husband, with live bullets substituted for the blanks he had inserted for the charade – and, later, he is murdered with the same gun. There is his glamorous wife, there is her brother, something of a tortured soul, who is in love with the maid who also acts suspiciously. But, she is murdered. Then there is the butler, always present, looking sinister – and eventually murdered. Then there is the aunt who owns the house, busily looking into things and being continually put down by the rather deadpan detective. She is almost murdered.

While the police investigate, and there are police guards throughout the house (relieved for midnight stacks snacks when necessary), there are also legal connections with the family, the revelation that the husband had changed his will disinheriting his wife and appointing a new executor, the aunt. There is the former executor of the will. Then there is an expert on detection who has solved previous cases.

The wife acts suspiciously, the mysterious hand that kills the husband looks feminine – and, it is the crime expert who has collaborated with the wife and who, in poetic justice, is killed by a shock from a phone that he has dismantled, just as he has killed the butler!

Creaky but always interesting.