The Midnight Warning

A sister & brother check into a posh hotel. Shortly thereafter, the brother is missing, & despite the sister's inquiries, no one admits to ever having seen the man. Meanwhile, a sniper shoots bullets through the window of the room that the brother & sister stayed in. Is there any connection between these events?

There's a little mystery, a little terror, some spookish pranks, and an eerie mortuary scene that is quite effective in delivering scares, however I found the rest of the film quite average and flat at times and a little confusing - but the denouement at the end for the "strange" going-ons is surprising and offbeat.

Detective Cornish goes to visit his friend Dr Walcott at a swanky hotel. Walcott has found something that Cornish would find interesting, a human ear bone in his fireplace. As Walcott is standing the window he suddenly collapses. Cornish calls for a doctor who arrives and tells Cornish that his friend collapsed from the heat, and that the blood on his forehead was from the fall. Something doesn't seem right and when the pair tries to investigate someone again takes a shot at the good doctor. With that the detective and the doctor are plunged head long into a mystery that the owners don't want them to know anything about.

From the opening minutes this movie grabs you and pulls you in. Just what in the heck is going on here? You have to know, as mystery is added to mystery and layer is piled on layer you really do want to get to the bottom of things. Certainly things take a strange turn or two, but in this case make it even more intriguing. This is a great little thriller.

The question I want to know is why this film isn't better known since its a dynamite way to spend an hour. William "Stage" Boyd makes a great detective and Hooper Atchley as Dr Walcott is simply a great deal of fun. Not only is the mystery really mysterious, you have some truly frightening scenes toward the end as the dead seem not to be so dead after all.These are the sort of thing you'd expect in a horror film not a mystery film, certainly not one that isn't an old dark house. (You may want to keep the lights on during the second half of the film)

See this movie. This is a keeper, and while you may not watch it a lot, it will be one that you hand off to friends that you'd like to turn on to a really good movie. See this movie you will enjoy it.

9 out of 10.

Supposedly based on a real incident which occurred at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. This film fits into the "Pre-Code" genre, only because the "baddies" are not brought to "justice" at the end. The acting is pretty good, although I have to smile when I remember that William "Stage" Boyd was shortly afterwards involved in a famous Hollywood sex scandal, which temporarily ruined the career of William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd when his photograph was erroneously printed in a newspaper along with the scandal story; I can understand why reporters thought it was the "Hoppy" Boyd & not the "Stage" Boyd! A bit too talky at times, but an interesting film nonetheless.

"After a young couple and the woman's brother check into a hotel, the brother turns up missing. While no one at the hotel seems to know where the man is, let alone acknowledge he was even there, the woman decides to hire an investigator to look into the matter. The investigator, his assistant and the young couple find some strange circumstances at the hotel, which lead them to a shocking discovery," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Ah… it's the old vanishing relative plot. This one moves along quite nicely, thanks to writer John Thomas Neville beginning his version from an interesting angle: hotel patron Hooper Atchley (as Steven Walcott) calls upon an old friend, investigator William Boyd (as William Cornish), after finding a human ear bone in his fireplace. Then, Mr. Atchley collapses… The unraveling mystery is engaging; and, the movie works as a filmed stage play.

Columbia Pictures model Claudia Dell (as Enid Van Buren) gets to play frightened in a mortuary, and Robert Harron's brother John ("Johnny" Harron, as Erich) has a good expositional scene explaining his involvement in the intrigue. Forgotten film veteran Phillips Smalley (as Dr. Bronson) is another asset. "Midnight Warning" obviously needs Alfred Hitchcock's direction, and a more satisfying conclusion (see "The Lady Vanishes").

***** Midnight Warning (11/15/32) Spencer Gordon Bennet ~ William Stage Boyd, Claudia Dell, John Harron

Reviewing this movie is a bit tricky. First, it was made in 1932, and we can't expect too much. The acting is stilted, and the dialogue.... is sometimes.... a bit stiff. Then, part of the detective's success depends on his super-duper binocular-glasses, which is more than a bit goofy. They look like something out of the back of a comic book, circa 1955. Between the set-up and the climax scene at the end, it drags, and I found myself pausing it and browsing web sites for a while.

The end of the action, as mentioned in some other reviews, is actually pretty harrowing, if you imagine watching it in a dark movie theatre in 1932. The scene seems to come out of nowhere in this otherwise standard genre film. If the rest of the film had been up to that standard, it would have been a much better production.

Finally, the denouement is a surprising twist - it doesn't work out anything like you'd expect in the genre. Let's just say it's far more ambiguous than Hollywood usually produced. I'd say it's worth watching if you're a fan of the genre and films of the early talkie era. Just don't expect too much - I don't know how another reviewer gave this nine stars. Different strokes, I guess.