Monsieur Strange détective

The mystery is easy to solve, I'm sure everyone who watched this film knew who the killer was right from the start of movie. Way to easy. They did try to throw suspicions another way a couple of times but it didn't hold water so it was easy to hold on to your first and correct guess.

If I were Johnny Strange: I would have been upset if someone came into my office and started taking it over the way the new secretary did. Even worse when she would not let me answer my own calls when I told/asked her to hand me the phone and she refused. Then I would have been furious when she told the police that I shot the man when I did not. On and on with this girl... I would not have liked her from the start even if she (or he in some cases) had a pretty face.

Yea Johnny "Angel" (as I'm calling him) really is Strange, about as strange as his strange secretary.

Not a bad film - kinda cute.

5/10

The story begins with a pretty blonde lady barging into a PI's office and taking a job before he has a chance to say anything. From this point on the guy should have been suspicious of her motives. But barging in is what she does and that's it. He becomes the victim of a frame-up and goes along with everything. His buddy Fred Mertz (I mean William Frawley) probably would have just looked the other way if he had been asked, but he gets steered away. The whole thing is so lightweight as to be inconsequential. There is a guy killed, but he was an extortionist jerk anyway and got what was coming to him. Everyone plays around, despite the potential seriousness that would exist under real circumstances. The characters mug and fool around and we just know that no-one is going to hang for their crimes. It has a nice quality to it but no real substance.

The beginning of "The Inner Circle" demonstrates why you have to watch and appreciate films by accepting them in the time they were made, not by today's things were different. Detective Johnny Strange (Warren Douglas) needs a new secretary. Forget typing and dictation - he wants touchable skin and good looks.

Strange runs "Action Incorporated," a detective agency, and it turns out he hasn't chosen a secretary - one (Adele Mara) has chosen him and takes over the office immediately.

The fun begins with the appearance of a veiled "Spanish woman," the murder of a radio star, Johnny receiving a couple of knocks in the head, and a police detective played by William Frawley.

The actors make the story fun. Warren Douglas was handsome and had a varied career as a screen writer and actor. Adele Mara is delightful as the take-charge secretary. In real life she married producer Roy Huggins and retired, appearing occasionally on his TV shows. William Frawley, I Love Lucy's Fred Mertz, was very good and less volatile than Fred.

Okay Poverty Row B.

Johnny Strange of Action Incorporated is interrupted by a beautiful woman while placing an ad for a secretary. She hangs up on the newspaper and takes the job. When a mysterious call comes in not long after Johnny finds himself knocked out and framed for the murder of a sleazy radio show announcer (ala Walter Winchell). Johnny must now try to solve the case before he ends up behind bars for the murder.

This is a fast moving mystery thriller with a smart ass attitude and a never ending stream of one liners. Running around 55 minutes this movie starts from the first frame and zips right on by to the last. To be certain the film shows signs of a reduced budget, there are only so many sets, but the film over comes the limitations by being very witty. The cast which includes William Frawley as a cop, Ricardo Cortez as suspect William Douglas as Johnny and first (?) billed Adele Mara as the secretary is first rate. The rest of the cast is filled out with many familiar faces and they all come together to make what could have and should have been a less than sterling little mystery into something that is actually quite enjoyable.

Definitely worth a bowl of popcorn and a soda (especially on a multi feature evening on a rainy night)

Before he can finish placing his help-wanted ad over the phone, the perfect candidate shows up at the office of Johnny Strange and fills the position of secretary without even giving Johnny a chance to say yes. She immediately takes the call from a new client, a mysterious woman with a Spanish accent. When Johnny meets her, the client is dressed all in black and wearing a heavy veil that conceals her face. She takes him to a house with a corpse lying in it, and asks him to take care of it. Before Johnny can call the police she knocks him unconscious with a bookend. He wakes up to see Det. Lt. Webb, who tells him the dead man is a notorious gossip columnist with a popular radio program. A nightclub manager, a singer, a housekeeper, a hard-of-hearing groundskeeper and two beautiful blondes are among the whos who may have done it.

"The Inner Circle" moves fast and gives away its surprises in the right places, helping us to ignore the strained humor and a silly twist on the usual gathering-the-suspects-into-a-room ending. Adele Mara and Warren Douglas are okay as the leads, but they're outshone by the supporting cast, especially William Frawley as the tough but even-tempered lieutenant and Will Wright as the old sneak who is probably pretending to be more deaf than he is.