The League of Frightened Men

First things first: available DVDs of this film do not have great picture quality. This is one of the Paramount films of the '30's now owned by another studio with no interest on issuing a "restored" version. So you can only get copies of films recorded on TV years ago. So you have to put up with all the flaws that such copies upon copies have.

Previous reviewers of this film have rightly pointed out the differences between the screen portrayal of "Nero Wolfe" and the depiction presented by Rex Stout in his many novels and short stories. Some might remember that the Saturday Evening Post used to publish some of the later Stout stories and provide illustrations of the detective which fed readers' imaginations. All portrayed a very large man, said in an early novel to be 1/6 of a ton and in later novels to be 1/7 of a ton. In any case like an NFL lineman today. Well, the actors who portrayed Wolfe on the screen all fell far short of the scale, and none conveyed the seriousness, dignity, and gravitas of Stout's conception. Wolfe was not a mirthful man given to jovial humor and feigned laughter. So Walter Connolly as Wolfe with his always cocked sideways head and chuckles does not meet the physical criteria.

Anyway, some reviewer mistakes a big fact about this movie: the league of men did make compensation to their injured classmate, paying his way through Harvard and providing a stipend afterwards. It's all there in the unrolling of the movie. Archie even castigates the accused for being "ungrateful."

There are two comments that have to be made from a motion picture perspective. 1. Stander, who would go on after his career blackball, played a much more sympathetic role as helper and associate to Macmillan and Wife. Here he is abrasive, small minded, and annoying -- totally unlike the smoother Lee Horsley and Timothy Sutton who would play "Archie" in later TV versions of Nero Wolfe. 2. Ciannelli was a very intense actor whose presence on the screen always compelled attention even in the minor but title role as villain in a Republic serial "The Mysterious Dr. Satan." Watch him as the riveting leader of the Thug rebels in "Gunga Din" (the Cary Grant movie) for one of his memorable roles.

Huge plot holes can be found, including the mystery of the box left in a bookstore, how a murder could be committed in a lights out room where the murderer grabbed a gun from the victim and shot him while knocking down a third person who inadvertently entered (err, wasn't there light from the hallway?), and exactly how did Wolfe solve the puzzle, other than guesswork, and why the crazy hoax was devised in the way it was since there was no foreseeable conclusion to it. Why hoax given the deaths that had taken place?

As a previous reviewer said, this movie is for those who want completeness in their search for dramatic portrayals of Nero Wolfe, but good luck in trying to track down English versions of the various Russian and Italian films which IMDb identifies.

Members of the Harvard Club are convinced that one of their own is out to get them all after two deaths in their circle have occurred. Another disappears and is presumed dead. So some of the remainder want Nero Wolfe to find a case against a disabled novelist called Chapin who they believe is the murderer. They were responsible for Chapin's disability after a student prank had gone wrong 19 years earlier and feel that his bitterness over that is the motivation.

Wolfe takes on the case and names his own exorbitant terms as usual. He proceeds to read all the mystery novels that Chapin has written searching for clues regarding Chapin's mindset. Chapin gets arrested after a third murder occurs. The action involves the retrieval of a typewriter that has tell-tale signs among it's keys.

This film plays down a lot of the characteristic Nero Wolfe foibles. He's quite willing to go out more and do his own legwork instead of relying on his sidekick Goodwin all the time. The first Columbia Nero Wolfe mystery with Edward Arnold had made the character more housebound. I like Walter Connolly as Wolfe in this as he has something of the detective in his screen presence. He had already played Father Brown onscreen and was to play Charlie Chan on radio.

Back in the day some rollicking frat boys injured Eduardo Ciannelli and he now walks with the aid of two canes. he's a successful novelist and has menace in his voice as always when he talks.

The others of this fraternity occupy various rungs on the social scale, but they all get the same menacing message that revenge is on the horizon for that hazing incident at Harvard.

Seems open and shut except to Walter Connolly as Nero Wolfe. Someone else has decided to do some murders under this blanket threat.

Connolly is a bit nicer than Edward Arnold in the other Nero Wolfe film. Lionel Stander is less of a dunce as Archie in this film.

The League Of Frightened Men is a good B film from Columbia.

Nero Wolfe is supposedly one of the great sleuths of detective fiction, but his appeal eludes me. Wolfe is an extremely unsympathetic character: arrogant, lazy, self-indulgent, corpulent. He avoids detective work (or any other work) unless he absolutely needs the money, preferring to spend his time eating enormous gourmet meals and tending his expensive orchids in his swank penthouse. Even more off-putting is the fact that Wolfe refuses to set foot outside, insisting that all the clues be brought to him by his 'leg man' Archie Goodwin. (It would be interesting if Wolfe were an agoraphobe, trapped in his house due to psychological terror rather than laziness.) Goodwin is a much more interesting character than Wolfe, and should have made a go of it as a detective without Wolfe's patronage.

In 1936, Columbia attempted to make a low-budget series of Nero Wolfe features. The casting for 'Meet Nero Wolfe' was impressive. Edward Arnold captured Wolfe's personality perfectly. I savour one scene in which Arnold, as Wolfe, supped a beer and then immediately spat it out again ... expertly depicting the basic vulgarity and self-indulgence of this character. Even more brilliantly, Lionel Stander was absolute perfection as Archie Goodwin, the role Stander was born to play. With this team, the series could have clicked.

For some reason, Edward Arnold did not come back for seconds. The next (and last) instalment in Columbia's short-lived series was 'The League of Frightened Men'. Stander returns as Goodwin, but Nero Wolfe is now played by Walter Connolly, an utterly unimpressive performer. Connolly's high-pitched voice and indecisive manner have ruined every role I've seen him play. There are quite a few good things in this movie (including its title), and I should like to have seen Charlie Chan or Philo Vance handle this material, with these production values (and with Lionel Stander along for the ride). But with Connolly in the central role, this film is a lot duller than it had to be.

The frightened men are ten Harvard alumni, from the same graduating class. They all came from wealthy backgrounds, and formed a fraternity. While at Harvard, they hazed Paul Chapin, a scholarship student from a lower-class background. The hazing went wrong (we never learn the details) and Chapin was crippled for life. All of this was years ago, and the ten men are now middle-aged. But three of them have died under mysterious circumstances, and a fourth has vanished. The other six have received threatening letters. In terror, they come to Wolfe (why not the police?), seeking his help. The obvious suspect is Chapin ... but in the interim he has become a successful author of murder mysteries, despite being crippled. Would he jeopardise his financial success for mere revenge? And, if Chapin is guilty, why has he waited so long for vengeance?

Eduardo Ciannelli was a character actor whom I've always disliked yet whom I consistently admire. His cold manner, coarse features and accent keep him resolutely unlikeable on screen, but his talent as an actor is manifest. (Unlike that of Walter Connolly.) There's one very powerful scene in this film. The Harvard alumni -- a bunch of overstuffed fiftyish men -- stand trembling in Wolfe's study, pleading with him to protect them from Chapin. Suddenly the door opens and Eduardo Ciannelli totters into the room, supporting his twisted body on two walking sticks. With Lon Chaney-like effort, he crutches his way round the room, confronting the men who maimed him, snarling with rage while they quiver and shake. Then he lurches out of the room again. A great scene by a great actor; too bad it isn't in a better film.

A major flaw in 'The League of Frightened Men' is that our sympathies are meant to be with Wolfe's six clients, and against Chapin. But I felt just the other way. These men pulled a stupid stunt that crippled a man for life, yet they don't seem the least bit disposed to compensating him. They haven't even the grace to apologise. (A correspondent who has read Rex Stout's novel informs me that they did give Chapin some compensation in the book; the subject isn't even mentioned in this film.) Ciannelli typically played unsympathetic characters, but here for once I was in his corner.

Also on hand here is character actress Rafaela Ottiano, whom I usually find quite sexy even while I'm repulsed by most of the characters she plays on screen. She and Lionel Stander are quite good here. Edward McNamara, the living embodiment of the Irish cop, plays here (for once) a cop who isn't Irish. One of the potential murder victims in this movie is played by Victor Kilian, ironically a murder victim in real life. 'The League of Frightened Men' has a lot of those wonderful elements that make many low-budget second features of the 1930s so enjoyable ... but the pieces never quite come together, and the hole at the centre of this movie is Walter Connolly's weak and boring performance. I don't believe that there has ever been a first-rate Nero Wolfe movie, but 'Meet Nero Wolfe' with Edward Arnold is much more enjoyable than this limp sequel. Mostly for the performances of Stander, Ciannelli and Ottiano, I'll rate this movie 6 out of 10.

In 1936, Columbia made its first Nero Wolfe film and it starred Edward Arnold as the amateur detective. A year later, they brought Wolfe back but with Walter Connolly playing the dick. In both cases, unfortunately, they chose Lionel Stander to play Wolfe's right hand man, Archie. I say unfortunately because Archie in the Nero Wolfe books was sophisticated and smart....not an uncouth boob like he is in these two films.

In "The League of Frightened Men", a group of Harvard alumni are worried that one of their old classmates might be murdering them. And, if this is the case, the man in question had plenty of reason and justification for doing so. But it's not at all certain the man in question is a killer and it's up to Wolfe to get to the bottom of this.

I really disliked this film...more so than the first one. It's because it's one of the talkiest murder mysteries I've seen. It's also confusing (Wolfe sometimes seems to pull things completely out of thin air) and gimmicky at the end...where Wolfe invites everyone to his house in order to reveal the real killer....a trope used approximately 30452998 times in other films (give or take 3). Overall, a disappointment...and odd to see the agoraphobe, Wolfe, leaving his home repeatedly during the movie.