A Shot in the Dark

Midway through this Chesterfield mystery, I found myself wondering: Is this plot awfully complex, or just awfully muddled? A suicide that is a murder; a stolen letter; an old photo in an album; odd family relations and relationships….Various characters guard strange secrets of the past and present. But I'm still not sure how much sense it makes.

Three male leads are at the center of the story. Charles Starrett is of course the rather upright and dashing young student whose roommate is bumped off in the film's opening moments. Starrett immediately calls for assistance from his criminologist father, played by Robert Warwick in the best Holmesian style. It seems like a promising setup—a father-son team parsing clues, nabbing bad guys. But, for me at least, Starrett's character came across as overly deferential and Warwick's as annoyingly smug. Third-billed is the great Edward Van Sloan as a professor (naturally) interested in the parties involved; his character is darkly appealing but, alas, not on screen often enough.

Overall, it's not a bad film, exactly, but I just couldn't feel it gain any momentum. The comic relief supplied by the moronic sheriff and his deputy is rather lame, and the rest of the cast seem to take things altogether too seriously. And there's one large red herring that would have added intrigue had it been a "real" clue....Anyway, early practice, I guess, for director Charles Lamont, who would go on to bigger and better and less serious things.

While many of the era's murder mysteries incorporated elements of other genres, such as comedy, action or those beloved old dark house kind of horror movies to shake things up a bit (or to make you forget about plot holes), this one uses no such things, which results in a quite serious tone and a very plot centered script. Which could be a good thing, but unfortunately the movie (which is now in public domain) fails in so many ways.

The budget was pretty low (the movie was produced by Chesterfield, shortly before it was merged into Republic, to avoid closure due to their debts), which would not be a problem itself, but the whole film is way too talkie, while the confusing plot drags around quite slow, with not much going on: the incompetent, but unfunny police officer admits that they don't know much about murder and do not really wish to be in charge (just what!?) and the son-and-father duo that ends up handling the case does not do much detective work either, as they often simply run into important evidence accidentally.

The acting is also pretty weak with people reacting to events in totally unlikely ways. For example when they discover the body of Byron, the first victim or when later others are told about his death, they are all like "Oh, really?" with almost zero emotion shown. Even when his mother learns about his death, we see her smiling, showing childhood pictures of the boy just moments later. The way the other murders are committed is rather unrealistic, the actors that are supposed to play collage boys are quite obviously much older than they should be and the plot, which revolves around some complicated family matters and a lot of money is just too muddled and uninteresting to keep up your attention for 70 minutes. Still, it is not a complete waste of time, but not really recommended either.

A student's suicide turns out to be murder. Murder mystery in which the police are happy to sit back and let an amateur criminologist, played with authority by character actor Robert Warwick, lead the investigation. Passable entertainment despite the inevitable far-fetched resolve.

"A death at a college campus appears to be a suicide but is actually a cover for murder. The dead man's roommate finds himself embroiled in a mystery as he tries to uncover the truth behind the young man's murder. Twists and turns, as well as some false leads, makes this a tough case for our collegiate hero to solve, let alone (keep) out of the clutches of the killer," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

The stars may be bigger than the movie. Handsome Charles Starrett (as Ken Harris), who has a small "lingerie" scene, became one of the top western stars of the forties, peaking in "The Return of the Durango Kid" (1945). The man playing his father, Robert Warwick (as Joseph Harris), was one of the most respected actors of the teens, beginning with his performance in "Alias Jimmy Valentine" (1915). Watch out for red herrings.

**** A Shot in the Dark (2/1/35) Charles Lamont ~ Charles Starrett, Robert Warwick, James Bush

The summary of this film isn't quite right. It is NOT about an old mansion but students at a college are killed--the first in the dorm, another at an assembly. Will there be a third?!

When a student is found hung outside his room, the coroner rules it's a murder--as the body was already dead before he was hung. It seems some sort of deadly needle was shot into the base of the victim's skull! Surely this is a VERY sophisticated murder, so it seems odd that they'd use the clumsy ruse of a hanging to hide the killing. It seems even odder that they'd ask one of the student's fathers to help investigate the crime--especially since he's not a detective but a corporate lawyer! Non-police investigating crimes was common in 1930s and 40s films, but usually they are amateur detectives or adventurers such as the Saint or Bulldog Drummond--here, he's just some lawyer who has had dreams of becoming a gumshoe! This weird plot isn't helped any by the crime itself. While it's supposed to be a mystery, I figured out who the murderer was about halfway through the film. It also was silly how complicated the murders were--they just weren't very practical or believable--more like a B-movie murder than one that could really happen. Overall, a somewhat competent movie that isn't completely bad---it just isn't all that good, either. And, I had to laugh at the old cliché where EVERY TIME A PERSON WAS ABOUT TO TALK, they were soon killed!! Gimme a break! You could do a lot better than this one by watching any of the Charlie Chan films!