One of the final releases from Tiffany Pictures, an independent studio with a tight budget and a classy moniker, was this B-picture that would remain obscure if not for starring Bela Lugosi in his heyday. In fact, he’s reunited with two of his Dracula co-stars, David Manners and Edward Van Sloan, which must have led some viewers to suppose it was another horror picture. Although that’s the key selling point, several more elements keep the film watchable.
The fast-moving plot, full of snappy dialogue and comic relief, makes good use of behind-the-scenes details of how movies are made in a studio, with Tiffany standing in for the movie’s fictional Tonart Pictures. As an amusing bell or whistle, a couple of scenes use color stencils for gimmicky light effects.
Perhaps the biggest plus is the photography by Norbert Brodine, which offers several graceful moments. Most notable is the complex, disorienting opening shot that begins with a glamorous dame (Adrienne Ames) in an auto outside a theatre. After jawing with a couple of mugs, she emerges from the car and the camera follows as she kisses a tuxedo’d gentleman before strutting into the building. The man engages in dialogue with the doorman and then is promptly shot dead in a hail of bullets, upon which the camera calmly continues stage right as the woman re-emerges from the side of the theatre and sits down amid a film director and his crew, who are shooting the scene. This play of real and make-believe has one more trick up its sleeve as the crew realizes, with horror, that the actor is really dead.
This must be among the grabbiest openings of any B-movie whodunit. Adding to the fascination is the fact that historically-minded viewers will immediately be reminded of the famous death of John Dillinger outside a movie theatre, as tipped off by the famous “lady in red”. However, that wouldn’t happen until almost two years later. So on top of its creative style, the movie’s opening now has an air of the prescient.
Our hero is a brash screenwriter (David Manners) who stands around with his hands in his pockets, making fun of the cops and discovering vital clues. The busy plot has a couple of howlers, including the drunken suspect (Alan Roscoe) who claims to know something about the murder but is brushed off until he can be found safely dead. Still, the deaths are ingenious and the light touch among many characters keeps it hopping.
While Lugosi glowers as the studio manager, he might as well be wearing a shirt that says either “Guilty as Sin” or “Big Red Herring”. Other characters include the stereotypical Jewish tightwad (Alexander Carr) who owns the studio (“Oy, this is going to cost me a fortune!”); his mincing aide (Harold Minjir), who’s the object of aspersions on his masculinity; the comical security chief (Vince Barnett) who blurts out lines like “That’s just what I was thinkin’!” and “A woman and two men — the internal triangle”; the police detective (John Wray) who doesn’t think the smart-aleck writer is guilty but hasn’t given up hope; and the director (Edward Van Sloan) who cares about art instead of money, as if that’s not fishy right there. That wasn’t a philosophy pursued by debuting director Edward L. Marin, who moved on to a busy career in B-movies that followed trends in comedy, musicals, westerns, and noir films.
While this public domain item has floated around for years in various prints, Kino has gone the extra mile in securing a restored archival print from the Library of Congress that includes hand-colored effects in two scenes. There are still notable variations in image and sound quality in several scenes, but this type of careful presentation makes all the difference between suffering through an eyesore and actually enjoying the movie, which after all is worth seeing for old-time buffs like you and me. Richard Harland Smith offers an amiable commentary that emphasizes the careers of everyone involved.