Triple tragedia

"The Patient in Room 18" is a murder mystery and comedy that was about the best Warner Brothers could do to try to copy MGM's successful Thin Man series. Patric Knowles is funny as Lance O'Leary. And, while Ann Sheridan is good as nurse Sara Keate, neither of them were a match for William Powell and Myrna Loy in the Thin Man series.

Still, Knowles and Sheridan carry this film and keep it from collapsing altogether. Their comedy, interspersed with some sleuthing is the best part. Otherwise, this very muddled screenplay might turn off most viewers early on. The various doctors, women, and affairs and would-be affairs, are enough to turn one off. They may not be developed or portrayed enough to be red herrings, but there sure are a batch of red minnows in this film.

If not for the O'Leary and Keate comic squabbles, I don't think I would have been able to sit through this whole film. They are 4 of the 5 stars I give this almost turkey flick.

Detective Patrick Knowles is in the hospital for a rest cure -- he has a tendency to walk in the street in his pajamas -- and to wrangle with nurse Ann Sheridan.Wile he's there, a patient donates thousands of dollars' worth of radium. He's killed and the radium is stolen. It's up to Knowles to solve this mystery, because .... well, because it is. He'd better do it quick, too, because this is a one-hour Warners B from a novel by Mignon Eberhart.

As you might expect, that means this is directed for speed, and even the underdecorated sets and simple lighting emphasize this fact. Fortunately, the B cast members have not lost the ability to rattle off dialogue at top speed. It's a fair mystery, which is something. Cameraman James Van Trees gets a couple of overhead shots to spice up the visuals, but I think I'd rather read this one than see it on a screen.

Lesser known Patric Knowles is Lance O'Leary, who has been acting goofy. walking around town in his jammies. so they lock him up in the Thatcher Hospital for rest and relaxation. and of course, there's drama going on at that institution. there's a large amount of radium being kept here for "treatment". and someone steals it. and kills a patient. in spite of that, it's all light and fluffy. the cops and now O'Leary are all trying to solve the case. amusing, but there are a couple plot holes. Ann Sheridan's career was still rising when she made this in 1938... her big roles would come in They Drive by Night and Man Who Came to Dinner, a couple years later. Based on the novel by Mignon Eberhart. had nine novels turned into film. directed by Bobby Connolly, who died young at 46, but was nominated for four oscars, for dance. this one is okay.

Famous well educated investigator Lance O'Leary (Patric Knowles) is under stress and sleepwalking from his inability to solve a case. He is sent to rest in a hospital under orders not to discuss his work where girlfriend Sara Keate (Ann Sheridan) is a nurse.

This starts with a fun premise and I like the couple's chemistry. Their banter is fun. I do wonder why the studio would keep changing actors in these roles. Knowles and Sheridan should be the ones to do every one in the series. Things may not be that well thought out back in the day. As for the mystery, I couldn't care less about the mystery or the suspects. It should simply start with the murder and the audience could discover the rest by following Lance O'Leary's investigation.

During the 1930s and 40s, Hollywood made at least 1,000,000,000 B-mystery movies involving some sort of private detective...often school teachers, newspaper reporters or radio personalities. So, "The Patient in Room 18" certainly seems familiar. In fact, the only big difference is that unlike so many of the cheapo Bs, this one is from Warner Brothers and stars some relatively big stars compared to most other Bs.

When the story begins, you learn that Lance O'Leary (Patric Knowles), the great amateur detective, is close to having a nervous breakdown. This is due both to exhaustion and because his last case was his first failure. And, despite his desire to keep working on this old case, his doctor insists on him being hospitalized and being placed on bed rest. Naturally, since this is a B-mysery, soon someone at the hospital is murdered...and some very valuable radium is stolen. And, naturally, Lance soon begins investigating.

Aside from a neat ending, there isn't a lot to set this apart from most Bs....this is neither bad nor good. In other words, it's a pretty typical mystery. The only part I hated was the beginning--the sleepwalking bit was utterly ridiculous. But, I also didn't hate it either. The perfect time-passer.



By the way, seeing the hospital using radium so cavalierly and just strapping it to a patient's chest is most disturbing. While they knew to some extent that radium was toxic (since it killed Marie Curie), they had no idea just how dangerous it was...and doctors inadvertently killed patients by exposing them to so much radiation.