Murder at the Windmill

The Windmill Theater in London claimed they never closed. They certainly didn't on this night as all the performers and stagehands are kept behind after a member of the audience is shot through the heart. The CID Inspector insists they re-enact part of the show again. And that is the part when the police suspect the murder victim was shot from the stage.

You will need to be prepared for some song and dance numbers watching this. I was concentrating on the acts to see if I could detect the point at which a shot could have been fired at the audience. There are wise-cracking chorus girls but no famed Windmill nudity to be had. For a large part this can be seen as more of a slice of theater history than a mystery. But chances are you won't detect the murderer if you make the same mistake as I made.

There is an indication of what the Windmill Revues were like in the 1940s. American film stars of this period are impersonated on stage in one of the numbers which I thought was impressive. Among the performers is Jimmy Edwards who thrived on a terrible stage act for years which you can now see for yourself. Jon Pertwee is another known face as the police sergeant. And then there's Garry Marsh as the CID chief who British mystery fans will recognize from his many supporting roles in the 1930s and 1940s.

In order to find out who fired the fatal shot during a performance the windmill theatre cast each have to go through their entire routine - in front of a police inspector.

This film is actually just an excuse for us to sit back and watch an entire Windmill theatre performance. The cast in the film are the actual girls who worked there and the routines are what they really did - week in week out.

The Windmill (now sadly long closed,) was in Soho, London - just off Piccadilly circus and a whole generation of actors and comedians got their first break there. The formulae was simple, strippers and erotic dancers would perform on the stage and a comedian would come on in between each act. So, to get the attention of a crowd of sleazy men who had snuck in for a glimpse of flesh you had to be good. And a glimpse was all they ever got - the British censorship laws prohibited anything else. There used to be a plaque of names outside the door with a list of who had played there with names like David Niven, Harry Seacom and a host of others (Norman Wisdom failed the audition). The plaque also boasted that during WW2 `We never closed'.

A lot of countries would think that a slice of history like this would be worth preserving but not us British. As with the Liverpool Cavern club (now replaced with a silly replica,) The Bronte museum (full of phoney replaced artefacts,) and other places where the short term profit from a slice of land or property was more important than any heritage.

So, if you can get a copy this film it is a (slightly sanitised) snapshot of a world long gone. When Piccadilly circus had a real round about with the Eros statue in its centre and every building in the circus had a huge fantastic neon advert. A very enjoyable old film with the subject matter not quite as sleazy as it really was.

The actual Windmill theatre is London had a racy reputation. As this movie was made in 1949, the censorship laws meant it could only touch upon this with one fan dance.

The movie begins with an audience member found dead at the end of the show.

The police are called in which includes the unassuming Detective Sergeant (Jon Pertwee) anda blustering Detective Inspector. It seems the dead man was shot.

So the entire's night performances is recreated to smoke the murderer out. This includes dancers, singers and a very long, dragged out an unfunny comic routine by Jimmy Edwards. He should had been caned by someone!

Basically this contrived movie is a way to recreate a sanitised revue of the Windmill. I guess people were easily pleased in the old days.

The murder mystery itself is an afterthought. Even with the vintage theatrical performances this was a poor movie.

This is like no other murder case. More interesting than who done it in this case is how it was done. It could only have been done from stage, so the helpless inspectors have no choice but to endure the whole show over again from the beginning to investigate at which point the shot could have been fired and how. They reach the end of the show until before the finale in a hilarious Mexican number all the girls on stage fire their own pistol.

This is a criminal comedy at its very best. It couldn't be more hilarious. At the same time, it's almost documentary, since this theatre actually never closed during the war but kept on giving shows day and night and was extremely popular in its charming location off the Piccadilly.

The poor inspectors have to suffer through one silly number after another, plagued by a bassoon pedant, silly dances with dogs, satirical ballets making fun of Hollywood, and in between lots of gags in the canteen, police officers getting lost in the theatre falling over chairs, one trying to escape and so on, while the girls keep playing cards when they are not on stage.

It's a wonderful rendering of how life at the Windmill actually went on almost non stop throughout the war with all its idyllic professional but endearing silliness. Applause, and applause again with cries for joy. It's simply adorable.

I believe this is the single worst movie I have ever seen. I kept hoping something would improve. Cant believe I sat through the whole thing. The acting was astonishingly horrible. The script ridiculous. The conclusion was improbable and not worth having suffered through all the previous minutes.