Starring Patric Knowles, Lionel Atwill, Anne Gwynne, Samuel S. Hinds, Mona Barrie
Directed by William Nigh
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A successful detective is lured out of a planned retirement to tackle the case of a murderer who targets mob bosses who've been acquitted as his victims.
This mystery from Universal Pictures has a few horror elements and plenty of regulars at the studio in the cast, who are fun to spot and offer numerous red herrings for the audience to puzzle over. The film also has a double dose of comic relief with Mantan Moreland serving as Knowles' valet, and Shemp Howard assisting Edmund MacDonald's police captain. Howard in particular is hilarious, and Moreland has some rare dramatic scenes when he's taken captive by Doctor Rx. I've read somewhere that the screenplay went through a lot of revisions and some scenes may have been ad-libbed. Whatever the results it's definitely an unusual balance of comedy and drama, which led my friend Dan Day Jr. to call it one of Universal's weirdest films. I like it, but it's definitely a departure.
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