Miss Tulip Stays the Night

Obviously designed as a second feature to a cinematic double bill, "Miss Tulip Stays The Night" aka "Dead By Morning" is a static low-budget comedy-mystery, set mostly inside one apartment, with a small cast, and loaded with circular talk to pad out the running time (it feels MUCH longer than its 65 minutes), leading to a rushed resolution. If there is one reason to bother with it, it's pouty Diana Dors, who shows a pleasing knack for comedy; in fact, she's so good that you may wish she had done more comedies in her career and fewer dreary dramas. OK, "Feathers" is sometimes funny as well. ** out of 4.

Patrick Holt and Diana Dors arrive at their new home in the country. He plans to start his new murder mystery, when in stalks Cicely Courtneidge demanding a room for the night and giving orders. The next morning, the couple discovers her dead in an armchair. PC Jack Hulbert shows up, followed by Inspector Joss Ambler.

It's the first movie with Hulbert and Miss Courtneidge in more than a decade, and this comedy-mystery is directed by Leslie Arliss at farce speeds. Unfortunately, there's little in it witty and very funny once Miss Courtneidge is reduced to a corpse. Holt and Miss Dors are a bit too sedate, Ambler is grouchy, and A.E. Matthews shows up at the beginning; he's funny, but then he vanishes, irrelevant to the plot.

It's a common issue with comedies that have a story to tell: the laughs are in the beginning, then the fun is abandoned in favor of the plot. It's a fair mystery, and it's good to see Hulbert and Miss Courtneidge on the screen, but despite some bits and bobs, it's dull.

This is an ill-advised and poorly executed revival of an out-dated type of comedy. Although purporting to be set in contemporary times (i.e. 1954), the nature of the plot and the style of its exposition are redolent of films made twenty years earlier, a feeling reinforced by the inclusion in the cast of those two old stalwarts of 1930s comedy, Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge.

The central plot is a murder mystery of the artificial Agatha Christie type, the contrived solution to which is expounded in dialogue so swiftly in the closing minutes of the film that after its test screening, one baffled viewer's notes read, "Who murdered who? And why?" The comedy is provided by Hulbert and Courtneidge individually, rather than in tandem, and consists of an embarrassing reprise of their well-worn bits of shtick. Courtneidge does not launch into her "two dozen double damask dinner napkins" routine, but one would hardly be surprised if she did.

Diana Dors is her usual beautiful self, but is ill-matched with Patrick Holt as her husband. The actress Ida Patlanski listed in the cast is also known as Pat Terry-Thomas, the wife of Terry-Thomas the English comic actor, whose dog Archie plays the role of Archie in this film.

The film has been restored and issued on DVD by the British Film Institute, together with production details which reveal that the final version of the film was influenced by the script writer, the head of the commissioning company, the producer, the director, one of the actors (Hulbert), and the British film censor, which perhaps explains its lack of cohesion.

Three years earlier, RKO had issued a comedy thriller, "Behave Yourself!" which too was about a young married couple becoming inadvertently embroiled in crime, in which too the wife's name was Kate and the dog's name was Archie. One wonders if the screen writer of "Miss Tulip" had seen that film and had residual memories of it. If so, it is a pity that he had not also remembered that the American film was not a mystery, the precise roles of all the miscreants being spelled out in the opening credits, leaving room for a great deal of comic action with far more entertaining results.

I wrote this after seeing the film on TV and reading the other reviews which i felt were very harsh. The main problem with the film is that it seems to fall between comedy and mystery with not quite enough of either, also the pace is poorly judged with a lot of messing around in the first 90% of the film before the mystery is solved in the last 5 minutes . It reminded me of long ago school homework when you start well but lose interest and put down anything to get it finished. But despite that this is basically a harmless glimpse of a world which is nowadays almost forgotten. There are some good lines, Diana Dors looks gorgeous and Hulbert and Courtneidge are charming in their roles and overall this is pleasantenough way of filling an afternoon.

This British comedy mystery was missing a couple of essential things: Gaumont-British or Gainsborough as the production company, 1935, plenty of lively interpolative music and a handful of songs to pad out the dolorous 65 minute running time. Never mind about the acting or story. It was a deliberately old-fashioned film mainly intended for the then older generation to enjoy, but I doubt whether they left the cinema with happy feelings engendered; and TV was making it so much easier to feel disappointed. It had as main characters old stalwarts Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, Joss Ambler, even A. E. Matthews – however time had taken its toll on them - alongside the photogenic Diana Dors for whom time was just beginning.

Young married couple take possession of house in country when a slightly cuckoo middle aged lady arrives (Courtneidge of course), decides to spend the night with them but leaves in an apparently murdered condition. The husband Patrick Holt is a crime story writer to whom local police Inspector Ambler takes an unreasonable exception as competition, the wife played by Dors is scatty until the last frantic five minutes. The film veers from interesting socially to embarrassing with pregnant pauses and blank looks to (very) occasionally witty dialogue: "The police have no right to infest my premises","Infest?","The word was chosen with care". Jack as the police constable and Cicely were generally awkward, some might say even when young, and just too out of practice by now for movies - what they could get away in 1935 was impossible by 1955. At the climax she really should've had a jaunty song and ungainly dance to burst into; and attention must paid to the denouement to understand it, that is, if still awake.

Maybe another sad thing is that it's probably easier and more cost-effective for the BFI to restore and release films like this in better condition rather than older, more worthy and more urgent cases. The production company Nettlefold which made this dire effort had been in operation more or less on a shoestring budget since 1895 but TV finally helped close it down in 1961. I've no objection to seeing this to say hello again to some old friends especially as it's so short, but it's difficult for even me to get much more from this or recommend it. It's OK, but if you're interested be prepared for a waste of time.