The Dark Hour

Some genuinely inspired bad acting doesn't prevent 1936's "The Dark House" from showering a few sparks of real originality. Two elderly brothers and their niece reside in a mansion. They're fearful something bad will happen and they're right. Two murders take place, neither appearing to have occurred as first thought.

This is a good house murder mystery. Elsa (the very beautiful and former Miss United States, Irene Ware) is falling in love with a detective, Jim Landis (Ray Walker). Elsa regularly meets Jim at retired detective Paul Bernard's house (he's played by Burton Churchill). Elsa's putative guardians, her uncles, don't like this developing match one bit. Of course their time together is as chaste as many moviegoers (and the moralistic censor-type folks) demanded.

One death having led to another, the two sleuths wisely combine forces to find the killer and figure out why the murders occurred in the first place. The plot is a bit tricky. Adding to the mystery is the possible role of Elsa's aunt, Mrs. Tallman. Here is a real treat-she's Hedda Hopper, once dubbed the "Queen of the Quickies," a woman who made a number of forgettable features before discovering that the printed word was mightier than fleeting celluloid images. For decades she and Louella Parsons battled for scoops as Hollywood's prime, incendiary gossip columnists.

Walker is the really weak actor here. He performs with a deadening numbness that made me wish he was the killer who would be executed on-screen. But his interaction with the retired senior cop is both interesting and dramatically effective.

Charles Lamont, born in Russia, was a veteran director who turned out many "B" flicks and some better comedies during a very long career (he did a number of the Abbott and Costello and Ma and Pa Kettle flicks). He's famously forgotten today for such films as the deservedly rarely viewed "I Was a Shoplifter" that brought young Tony Curtis to the screen. In "The Dark Hour" he crafted an interesting murder mystery. If you can get it as I did for $4.99 on DVD (thanks again, Alpha Video) it's worth your time just to see Hedda Hopper disporting herself as a grand dame but maybe I'm just dating myself.

6/10

Henry Carson is found dead slumped over his desk in the library. Because of the slightness of the wound and the lack of bleeding there is a mystery about the way he has been murdered. Henry had been a curmudgeon and it's only his brother Charles who shows any real signs of grief over his death. And he seems to be concerned that he may be next to die in such a way.

There are two investigators on the case. The old experienced hand who is actually retired and the young one who shows how green he is or at least that's how the elder one thinks of him. Both have an interest in the Carson household chiefly through their associations with Elsa who is heir and niece to the Carson brothers. Landis the younger investigator is engaged to her. The older investigator Bernard has also an interest in George Carson and his new butler Foot as he has been investigating them both for years.

I don't think I've ever been confronted by so many clues as I was in this whodunit. It was puzzling when trying to piece all of them together into one cohesive idea of how and why the murders were committed. The suspects include a chemist who is experimenting on poison gas and an intruder who turns out to have a pathetic tale to tell and just about everybody else in the story. There is an impression that some characters are covering up for other characters. And there is an air of a slightly unusual grayness to the humor and the ending is certainly unconventional.

The plot has two reclusive old men keeping a watchful eye on their affairs they barely allow their niece to go out and visit a retired detective living next door. The woman is also visiting an active police detective and friend to the retired detective. When one of the uncles is murdered the young detective and retired detective join forces to solve the crime.

The suspect pool is too shallow to sustain this films 70 minutes and I would love to think that you can cut 20 minutes out of this and get a decent thriller, but I don't think its possible since this movie goes round and round dropping just enough clues and clever dialog in the interest of solving the crime that you really can't cut much. It would be a better movie if it simply got on with it instead of stopping for long scenes of discussion that seem more designed to fill out the running time rather than economically tell the story. Frankly I found myself hitting the fast forward in order to just have the movie move at a reasonable speed, which is a shame since this film is filled with tons of pithy dialog between all of the characters that I never heard.

Recommended for those with patience.

(Still any movie where the butler named Foot and played by great character actor EE Clive can't be all bad)

Strikingly beautiful Irene Ware lives with her two wealthy, disagreeable uncles, who are inexplicably living in fear for their lives. She is befriended by a retired detective neighbor and romanced by an active detective. When one of the uncles is murdered the detectives join forces to solve the crime. Benton Churchill is the standout in the cast as the believably tough, smart, and experienced detective. A good cast executes a well-acted whodunit with lots of twists and turns. What is unique and quite entertaining is watching the interaction between the two detectives as they hypothesize various scenarios based on newly discovered facts. This also has an excellent ending. The movie I watched was on Prime and is a terrible copy. This is worth searching out and I feel would have gotten a better rating from me if I had seen a better copy of the movie.

Chesterfield does it again--a tidy whodunit that, surprisingly, holds up pretty well despite its age. The race between the two detectives is quite droll and interesting; it shows, once again, that the fundamental lesson of integration between the old and the new still applies--regardless of decade and/or century. Of course, as the film was lensed nearly 70 years ago, some of the technical aspects of the plot do not age well. And, unless I missed something, I would have preferred a little more detail into the motive for the crime. Despite these minor quibbles, it was a relatively enjoyable 71 minutes, especially when Hedda Hopper was chewing up the scenery.l