Murder at the Windmill

The actual Windmill theatre is London had a racy reputation. As this movie was made in 1949, the censorship laws meant it could only touch upon this with one fan dance.

The movie begins with an audience member found dead at the end of the show.

The police are called in which includes the unassuming Detective Sergeant (Jon Pertwee) anda blustering Detective Inspector. It seems the dead man was shot.

So the entire's night performances is recreated to smoke the murderer out. This includes dancers, singers and a very long, dragged out an unfunny comic routine by Jimmy Edwards. He should had been caned by someone!

Basically this contrived movie is a way to recreate a sanitised revue of the Windmill. I guess people were easily pleased in the old days.

The murder mystery itself is an afterthought. Even with the vintage theatrical performances this was a poor movie.

I believe this is the single worst movie I have ever seen. I kept hoping something would improve. Cant believe I sat through the whole thing. The acting was astonishingly horrible. The script ridiculous. The conclusion was improbable and not worth having suffered through all the previous minutes.

The Windmill Theater in London claimed they never closed. They certainly didn't on this night as all the performers and stagehands are kept behind after a member of the audience is shot through the heart. The CID Inspector insists they re-enact part of the show again. And that is the part when the police suspect the murder victim was shot from the stage.

You will need to be prepared for some song and dance numbers watching this. I was concentrating on the acts to see if I could detect the point at which a shot could have been fired at the audience. There are wise-cracking chorus girls but no famed Windmill nudity to be had. For a large part this can be seen as more of a slice of theater history than a mystery. But chances are you won't detect the murderer if you make the same mistake as I made.

There is an indication of what the Windmill Revues were like in the 1940s. American film stars of this period are impersonated on stage in one of the numbers which I thought was impressive. Among the performers is Jimmy Edwards who thrived on a terrible stage act for years which you can now see for yourself. Jon Pertwee is another known face as the police sergeant. And then there's Garry Marsh as the CID chief who British mystery fans will recognize from his many supporting roles in the 1930s and 1940s.

A man is killed at that most dangerous place in the world: a theater. Movie stalwart Detective Inspector Garry Marsh shows up with comic-relief sergeant Jon Pertwee to investigate. This involves recreating the show, during which the front-row victim was offed.

The Windmill, for those of you who haven't seen MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS, was the London music hall that included tableaux vivantes to get around British law that forbade nudity on the stage -- unless the performer didn't move. Alas, the film producers never offer much more than the sort of semi-revealing costumes that I saw at Radio City Music Hall as a child. Neither was I terribly impressed by the mystery aspect. I spotted the killer early on, but found no clue leading to the detection until the final revelation.

Still, there are some good, if not particularly memorable revue numbers, and the performers are pretty young women. There is also one particularly funny bit in which a comic, used to a large, appreciative audience, is forced to go through his routine for two tired, stony-faced detectives. Although it's strictly a B movie, it's a very pleasant, bright time-waster.

When a man is killed at the Windmill Theatre during a performance, the police have to discover which of the actors and stagehands is a murderer.

Murder at the Windmill is bad. Apparently someone thought the film would be better with musical numbers, so there's a couple randomly shoehorned in at various intervals. The numbers are horribly staged, and the songs are terrible. You also get to suffer through a terrible comedy routine by Jimmy Edwards and some guy doing a Jimmy Stewart impression.

Jon Pertwee is the only good actor in the bunch, giving a fun comedic performance as one of the policemen. The rest of the cast is pretty unmemorable, with the exception of Diana Decker, who is horrendously annoying. Peter Butterworth has a bit part as a policeman.

Unless you're a diehard Jon Pertwee fan, I'd avoid this one.