Mystery House

All things considered Mystery House is not a bad product coming out of Warner Brothers B picture unit. It's another one of those classic shootings in a locked room, where the verdict can be nothing else, but suicide. Or can it?

The members of the board of directors of a company are gathered on a retreat where the president confronts them with his suspicion that one of them is guilty of embezzlement. He's found shot to death in a locked room, but the man's daughter can't believe it wasn't murder so she hires a private detective and invites the whole lot of them back to the retreat where the crime occurred.

Two murders later and we have an answer. No hints at all as to who and how, but I will say the weapon is in plain sight.

Ann Sheridan and Dick Purcell are our leads and television fans will spot a future detective in William Hopper who played Paul Drake on the Perry Mason series.

Back in 1938 when it ran as the second feature of a double bill, I don't think too many people left their seats.

MYSTERY STREET gives laconic DICK PURCELL the leading role, while ANN SHERIDAN is seen in one of her early roles at a time when the studio was grooming her for bigger things in the future. She's a nurse caring for a crotchety old woman (ELSPETH DUDGEON) in a wheelchair, an old woman who is annoying as all get out as she bosses everyone around.

The setting is a snowbound hunting lodge, a handsome cabin where all of the suspects in a rich man's murder are gathered for the weekend, while Sheridan summons her boyfriend detective Purcell to unravel the murder case. He does so, with the help of a few clues that lead to the murderer's identity and in time for a happy ending with Sheridan promising to marry him.

It's standard stuff, respectable enough to play the lower half of double bills back in the '30s. Fans of "Perry Mason" on TV, will recognize WILLIAM HOPPER (with dark black hair), but most of the cast consists of largely unknown players.

Lasting only a brisk 56 minutes, it passes the time quickly and is a moderately entertaining B-film mystery.

At a company retreat, Hubert Kingery announces that there has been fraud within the company. Later that night, a shot rings out and his dead body is found in his room. His death is ruled a suicide but his daughter Gwen (Anne Nagel) believes it to be murder. Her aunt's nurse Sarah Keate (Ann Sheridan) suggests her detective boyfriend Lance O'Leary (Dick Purcell). Gwen gathers everyone back to the lodge for the weekend and they get snowed in.

I wasn't really following the various suspects. The movie is less than one hour long and doesn't spend much time giving each character some depth. Quite frankly, the perpetrator can be anybody other than the aunt and Gwen. In fact, the aunt has one of the better twist. Lance and Sarah are not particularly compelling investigators. There are better investigating duos from that era.

When a rich banker is mysteriously killed, detective Lance O'Leary (Dick Purcell) is called out to a remote hunting lodge to investigate.

Mystery House is a typical cheap Warner Brothers mystery film. The plot has several gaping holes, but most of the actors are halfway decent. Star Dick Purcell would later become the first actor to play Captain America on screen. Ann Sheridan is rather wasted, but Elspeth Dudgeon (who had a very memorable role in The Old Dark House) is a hoot as the cantankerous aunt.

There's worse way to spend 56 minutes.

It's a decent if unremarkable little mystery with many clichés from that whodunit saturated decade. There's the puzzle of murder in a locked room, an old dark house, and suspects aplenty. Of course, the culprit is exposed amid a climactic assembly of suspects, perhaps the biggest cliché of all. As detective Lance O'Leary (that name should have been reconsidered), actor Purcell has nearly zero charisma, which unfortunately eliminates someone for the audience to identify with. And even the formidable Ann Sheridan is denied her usual pizazz. Only crotchety old Aunt Lucy (Dudgeon) projects real personality. What the movie does have going for it is a clever solution to the locked room.

The studios (here it's Warner Bros.) turned out hundreds of these competent little programmers year after year, a tribute to their professionalism. Of course, a whodunit like Mystery House would migrate later on to TV, especially to a series like Perry Mason (1957- 1966), where the suspects would assemble in a courtroom. Speaking of Mason, catch a sleek, young William Hopper years before his personable detective role on the Mason series.

All in all, the movie's main value may be in it's representative nature of what people went to see on a slow Saturday evening so many years ago.