Un dramma per televisione

This could have and should have been a hell of a lot more fun than it is, but instead we're stuck watching a bunch of people standing around talking for an hour about some sort of "death ray" emitted by a new contraption called a television set. Not much happens here, it's just a lot of talk and standing around, and more standing around and more talking. Even Bela Lugosi (playing two characters!) doesn't have anything to work with here, nothing can save this mess.

It might hold slight appeal for those who are interested in an early look at both cinema and television, but horror fans and Lugosi fans will be bored to tears with this one. It's static and slow moving.

When one watches an old B movie from one of the poverty row studios, you should go in cutting a little slack. This picture, even with that mea culpa, does not fare well. Bela Lugosi does an excellent job in the acting department, but up against the passionless talking automatons in this turkey, Huntz Hall would come off as Laurence Olivier.

The story is simple. Watching a TV broadcast, a man suddenly chokes and dies on camera. (He probably wanted to get out of this waste of celluloid as soon as possible.) Now, the room full of people are all suspects, and the cops close up the house until the crime is solved.

Besides moving along so slowly that the hour length seems interminable, this isn't the only sin the producers made on this curio. The usual banter with racial stereotypes is embarrassing to say the least. From the Chinese houseboy who rattles off Charlie Chan and Confucious sayings so badly you can't understand his words half the time, to Hattie McDaniell slipping up and even using proper English for a moment when the writing for her character has the usual "negro" speech patterns, it is a textbook example of how racist a time the 1930s were.

It is probably because of bad movies like this that Mr, Lugosi's career went into such a tailspin that eventually took his life. Yet, he does acquit himself nicely in the acting department here playing not only a scientist but his own twin (though the two Belas never share a scene due, I suspect, to a dismally low budget) The fact that the film is so horrendous and wastes a great opportunity to utilize the budding medium of television And even the solution to the mystery is the pits. I won't give a spoiler here, but there IS no way to spoil this ending. It was pitiful - along with the rest of this script.

On top of all this, the copies that exist are so bad and have many jump-cuts throughout. A true shame and waste of the legendary Bela Lugosi.

Finally, I wonder if this director had much of a career beyond this joke of a studio that most likely was owned by some theater chain (as many such studios did prior to the anti-trust laws.) He probably went into accounting or some other less creative field.

Although the crime feature "Murder By Television" has a couple of good points, it is really only fair (at best) overall. Bela Lugosi makes the best of a somewhat atypical role for him, and at times the thoughts and speculations about early television are of some interest. Otherwise, the production, the characters, and most of the cast are all nondescript. The story just never fits together very well, and it also never really hits full gear.

Lugosi plays the assistant to an inventor who is supposed to have pioneered a form of early television that is full of valuable possibilities. The invention is coveted by a number of outside interests, and the murder mystery that results is caught up with the intrigue surrounding the invention. It sounds like an intriguing setup, and it could have been, but the script doesn't make very good use of it. Both the dialogue and the story could easily have been much better.

Lugosi adds presence to any role, and his is easily the most interesting of the characters for that reason, but he is still limited by the material. Besides Lugosi, the most talented performer in the cast is Hattie McDaniel, and she also is severely limited by her character, who is there only to provide some slight comic relief, which comes at the unfortunate character's expense.

This won't have any appeal at all for anyone who is not a fan of its genre, and even for those of us who usually enjoy these old B-features regardless of their quality, it is, unfortunately, only barely worth watching.

I am always amazed when I find yet another ultra-low budget film starring Bela Lugosi. While I do generally enjoy his films, they certainly were not 'high art' or very deep--and so many of them had downright crappy production values. Often it looked as if Bela would appear in ANY film provided the check cleared! You don't believe me, then think back to such horrid films as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA, ZOMBIES ON Broadway, GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (with the East Side Kids) and MURDER BY TELEVISION!!! However, often despite the terrible budgets and overall cheesiness of the films, they were still often fun to watch--or at least to laugh at due to their ineptness. Unfortunately, MURDER BY TELEVISION is that rare low-budget Lugosi film that actually is kind of boring and static. Despite being a murder mystery, the film is amazingly static and uninvolving. Plus, the roles played by Bela just seemed terribly written and bizarre--and not in a great way. The only major plus this film has that raises it to almost-mediocrity is the idea of television being a topic of a film as early as 1930. From a purely historical standpoint, it is an interesting film.

Murder By Television is one of Bela Lugosi's more obscure movies but at least it is available on video and DVD. I quite liked this.

While doing a worldwide broadcast promoting that new invention called television, a man suddenly collapses and looks as if he could have had a heart attack. His death was certainly not caused by his heart, it seems he was murdered by a death ray. The police are put on the case and there are plenty of suspects...

This is a nice little horror/mystery, even though a little short at under an hour.

Watch it if you get the chance.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.