Mystery Liner

This Edgar Wallace murder mystery takes place aboard an ocean liner being piloted automatically, as everyone and his grandmother is trying to get hold of the tube that pilots the ship without benefit of human hands. Ed Maxwell, veteran of the early silver seen, has a decent role as an investigating private eye. He may remind some of Nero Wolfe. Zeffie Tilbury, as Granny Plympton, a familiar face from Little Rascals shorts, was the most annoying character. No mystery here, and dreadfully acted and sound-produced to boot. It feels like a play transferred directly to Hollywood. Some of the performers would appear to have come right from the NY stage.

On board this ritzy passenger liner, the ship's control room communicates with a roomful of scientists on shore using a cool two-way Etch-a-sketch style device: You scrawl out your message on a picture screen, and at the other end they see your handwritten message appear just as you wrote it. Pretty neat! Unfortunately, that's probably the most interesting thing about the whole movie.

This B suspense picture features a broad array of standard characters—embattled veteran captain with mysterious health issues (Noah Beery), all-business doctor, pretty blond nurse (Astrid Allwyn) who is being pursued by a rival pair of ship's officers, a firecracker of an old lady who wants to party, a tall and thin mystery traveler (Gustav von Seyffertitz), and a military man (Edwin Maxwell) who quickly appoints himself chief investigator when mysterious events kick in.

The mystery centers around a high tech invention called S-505, which is apparently a tube that will enable a ship to be steered and controlled remotely. The invention is ready to be tested—but look out! because a sinister foreign power is very interested in the device and may have spies aboard.

It all adds up to intrigue, deceit, and even murder….but alas, the actors and plot are sadly defeated by slow pacing, obvious dialog, and just a generally muddled presentation of the whole story. Too bad, because there is a nifty story buried in there somewhere.

Mystery Liner has to be one of the very few times that the senior Noah Beery ever headed a cast list. He had to go to Monogram Pictures to have this happen and the results are somewhat indifferent.

Edgar Wallace novels are usually sources of material for film, but in this case they didn't really get down to business until the final third of the film. Someone has invented a remote control steering device for ships and so while this is peacetime, it's decided to test it on a passenger liner. But a mysterious foreign power wants to get this device and the plan is to cut in with their own radio waves and steal the ship. They've fatally injured the inventor Ralph Lewis and a few more people will die before all is revealed.

Beery plays the ship's captain who is stripped of command due to a nervous breakdown and forced into a rest home. But he doesn't show up there and there are sitings of him on the voyage.

A collection of interesting character actors besides Beery make Mystery Liner somewhat enjoyable. Here's a hint though, don't be fooled by some of the obvious casting in deciding who are the good and the bad folks here.

The story in this B-feature has some fairly interesting developments, and it makes the movie just worth watching despite a very slow pace and some other weaknesses. The acting performances vary in quality from solid to weak, and the production is adequate most of the time. So in most respects it is a typical B-movie of its era, but the story offered some possibilities that might have furnished the basis of a better movie.

The story starts with a liner preparing to test a Professor's device for using remote-control to guide the ship from a laboratory. The experiment is complicated by the captain's nervous breakdown and by an on-board murder. The ship also contains numerous passengers, some with various eccentricities and others with some suspicious characteristics. While the setup could have been taken in a number of different directions, the way it actually develops is probably as good as any.

One of the main things that keeps it from being better is that too many of the key characters never take form, remaining uninteresting and one-dimensional. Likewise, the dialogue never approaches the interest level of the story. And too often, things move very slowly, making it seem longer than the running time.

On the plus side, it maintains the mystery level rather well, and it does hold your attention. The atmosphere is not always maintained, but for much of the time the shipboard setting is used fairly well. More than anything, the remote-control idea is used in a way that was rather creative for its era, and it almost provides enough interest in itself to make you keep watching.

MYSTERY LINER (1934)

* 1/2 (out of four)

The ship is sailing the ocean when bodies begin to pile up. Is it a stowaway? The captain? Another member? The biggest mystery is trying to figure a way to stay awake. Typical overly talkative Monogram film that tries to be mysterious but forgets to be interesting. Monogram was always smart by releasing films very short (usually under 65 minutes) but this film really doesn't have a thing going for it. By the time the movie is over it feels like a grade D film.

Available on DVD through various PD companies.