The Great Hotel Murder

Standard murder mystery of its era, uplifted by the sometimes amusing camaraderie between Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen (who were paired up in several films; in this one, Lowe is the one with the brains) and occasional cleverness in its ploting (including one real surprise). But the ending is incredibly abrupt, in all the prints I have managed to find - which leads me to the theory that a 100% full print is not available anymore. ** out of 4.

Crime novelist Roger Blackwood competes with hotel house detective Andy McCabe in solving a murder by poisoning at a medical convention. For a while they get misled by red herrings.

Edmund Lowe plays a know-it-all, dry-witted crime author and Victor Mclagen a dopey house detective - of course, he lacks in the brain department and Lowe is the opposite. I love their war of words and the put downs. Lowe's comeback lines were delivered smoothly. The mystery is engaging, there's a certain energy in the plot enough twists and turns to keep you watching. There's a good line of suspects, a neat ending, if albeit a little too slapdash as if they ran out of celluloid.

The action takes place in the San Franciscan Hotel Mardena. A man is found dead in Room 940. It's a room that's not his own and the death turns out to be murder by poisoning. The case gets taken on jointly by McCabe the house detective and resident murder mystery writer Blackwood. Although they are ostensibly acting together there is a rivalry between them in which each other tries to take the other for a fool.

Edmund Lowe plays Blackwood. He is in lots of 1930s and 1940s mysteries. If you like him in this you may also like him as the writer David Chase in the 'Front Page Detective' TV series (1951-1953). I enjoy watching him as an older and tougher character in those episodes. The TV series ran at the same time as the pulp magazine 'Front Page Detective' which must have been a popular read for mystery fans at that time.

Bruiser Victor McLaglen plays McCabe who has a sidekick called Feets played by John Wray. Feets becomes more involved in the story towards the end and provides good knockabout sequences with McCabe. Suspicion passes between a number of characters in party hats at a New Years gathering. The reveal comes in the final scene and then there is an abrupt ending.

Just finished reading the book by Vincent Starrett, I watched this (on YouTube) and was unimpressed. The basic plot was similar to the book, but the screenwriters changed too much for me to accept. The book's amateur sleuth was a young film critic (not a mystery writer) and he was younger than the actor portraying him, and much less confidant.

The book is set in Chicago and Wisconsin, not California. The culprit is sort of the same, although a lot of the details in motive and exposition are different.

None of this is damning to a movie, but the film itself is too scattered to gel completely. (The whole New Year's Eve party was a silly insertion, not in the book.) There were a few things I thought were silly (like having a hotel room closet that had a lock on the outside. Huh?)

If I hadn't just read the book I don't think I'd have stuck out the entire 109 minutes runtime.

Mystery novelist Edmund Lowe and house detective Victor McLaglen try to figure out why a guest committed suicide..... or was he murdered?

With Eugene Forde directing, you can be assured this late Fox programmer will be efficient. Unfortunately, it has one of the problems of a lot of mysteries: too much talk. While clearly intended to play off the leads' Quirt-and-Flagg competitive comradery, a large cast of suspects and a solution that seems to come out of nowhere make this another weak movie, typical of much of the Fox output in the period leading up to the merger with 20th Century. With Mary Carlisle, Henry Stephenson, John Qualen and Madge Bellamy.