Aventura Cavalheiresca

Regretfully I have to say straight away that I was disappointed in this film. It is the follow-up to 'The Westland Case' in the short-lived Universal Bill Crane detective series. The first film was good so I do admit that I had expectations of this one. And indeed this drew me in at the beginning. But by the time of the early second half of the movie my eyes started to glaze over which is always a bad sign.

A naked woman initially called Alice Ross is found hanged from apparent suicide in the downbeat Darlow Hotel. Colonel Black calls in Bill Crane in on the case but then later he denies that he actually did so. The body is placed in a morgue and a number of interested parties have their own theories who the woman actually was. The body disappears and the morgue keeper is killed by an intruder at the same time.

The identity of the woman keeps changing according to the character who is talking about her. I found it difficult to fathom the relationship these people had to the dead woman at time. The plot became meandering rather than intriguing so the film lost all real mystery for me. By all means try this film because it has a fairly good IMDb rating. And discouraging people from watching B-mysteries from this period is the last thing I want to do but sorry to say I have this one on my DWA (Don't Watch Again) list.

That's how fast the movie unfolds. I think I followed the plot well enough to understand what happened, but I'm not sure. As near as I can tell, there was one unresolved murder, but it didn't affect the story one way or the other. It was also never explained how Preston Foster could be a suspect in one of the murders - he was a detective trying to solve it, after all. I guess it was to inject some humor and make the Police Dept. look comical. Never understood why 30's movie audiences bought the premise of mixing comedy into murder mysteries. To me they're like oil and water.

There are lots of unexplained bits of trivia, coincidences and non-sequiturs, too many to mention here, but that kind of thing devalues the storyline and serves only to break the viewers concentration - and with this picture one needs all of one's concentration. The cast was serviceable, especially Preston Foster as the hero, and it was fun to see Bill Elliott before he became a cowboy star. But the break-neck pace makes me think I should see it again, to catch what I missed the first time - so my rating is a holding grade. I'll get back to you.

A few years before this Universal cheapie was made in 1938, the Laemmles, father and son, were ousted from the studio because of the excessive amount of money they overspent on their 1936 prestige production of the Irene Dunne SHOWBOAT. This typical lowest-budget B picture shows what the same studio could do for pennies. Stanley Cortez, who was to go on to photograph MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, must have lit these cheap sets in five minutes. The music is all stock, some borrowed from THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. The director, the talented former editor Otis Garrett, does a commendable job. He shoots close angles to hide the bare sets and minimal furniture, and keeps the actors moving and talking so frantically that no one need bother to follow the plot. Lots of good wisecracking dialogue,and excellent no-nonsense acting from the usual tough guy and tough girl regulars. Well worth a visit if only to see the butler in the penthouse scene.

Part of the Crime Club series, and based on an original by Jonathan Latimer, this nifty little mystery is often cited as a model of 30s B-movie adeptness. It was directed by the unjustly forgotten Otis Garrett (who died young), a former editor who uses flash-pan edits and other visual tricks to maintain a breakneck pace -- so fast that it's pretty difficult to follow the complex plot. Although a bit too reliant on dialog scenes, there are enough effective wisecracks, bizarre demimonde characters (shifty undertakers, dour taxi drivers, carefree taxi dancers) and risqué asides (apparently, the production code enforcers often neglected these low budgeters) to raise the quality well above the norm. One side benefit is an appearance by a young Barbara Pepper, sassy and sardonic as ever, but surprisingly lithe and seductive. Soon-to-be-famous Stanley Cortez provided the cinematography.

The Lady in the Morgue is part of a three-film Crime Club series from Universal, this one starring Preston Foster as detective Bill Crane.

The body of a woman, Alice Ross, is found in a cheap hotel, dead from an apparent suicide. The police believe it to be Kathryn Courtland, a woman from a wealthy family who has gone missing.

When Crane, hired by the family, arrives at the morgue with his assistant Doc (Frank Jenks), the body is gone and the morgue attendant is dead. The police suspect Crane.

It seems that several factions have different ideas about the identity of this woman. As Crane endeavors to learn who she is, he gets cracked over the head with a liquor bottle, appears at an inquest, and has a night at the cemetery.

One awful, thoughtless scene, when Crane, testing whether the woman really hung herself, experiments with the device using a black hotel attendant who accompanies him to the hotel room.

Preston Foster was an interesting man, with careers as an actor, singer, and composer. He handles the role of Crane well, with lively support from Jenks. Wild Bill Elliott pre his cowboy days plays a Courtland relative, and the very exotic-looking ex-silent screen actor Roland Drew plays a band leader.

The film moves fast - maybe too fast given all the different identity stories - with a little finesse, this could have been a solid mystery film. But here we're in the land of the cheap Bs. The director, Otis Garett, was quite good. However, he sadly died three years later.