Midnight Phantom

1935's "Midnight Phantom" was a rare non-Western from Reliable Pictures Corporation, which lasted five years and produced 48 titles overall. Top billing goes to Reginald Denny, playing a famed criminologist who just happens to be conducting a lecture on that subject when the local police chief (James G. Farley) gets knocked off. Among the roomful of officers under suspicion, we have his daughter's fiancée, whose late brother was killed in the process of committing a crime. Then when the police surgeon claims to have discovered the murder method, he immediately keels over dead! Unfortunately, the first murder doesn't occur until the 45 minute mark of this 59 minute feature, way too much exposition for even the sturdiest movie buff. Claudia Dell's promising career never really took off, making her final appearance in a 1944 Monogram Charlie Chan, "Black Magic." In the end, Reginald Denny was perfectly cast, coming off a similar role in James Whale's sumptuous "Remember Last Night?"

Dreary tale of nothing that centres around a city police precinct in which the cranky chief (Farley) becomes the target of an apparently disgruntled regional captain, while his daughter (Dell) frets about her imminent marriage to precinct hotshot (Hughes) whose younger brother was exposed to be a criminal, tainting both his position in the Force and with his future wife and in-law.

Reginald Denny co-stars as the charismatic, cigar-making professor who can diagnose a criminal from just a line-up, a performance he duly displays for the precinct at midnight leading to the anti-climactic five-minute whodunit. The final five minutes treats the audience to a pointless epilogue involving a picnic; something to which you can look forward. As for the first fifty minutes, there's very little material on which to comment, just Farley berating his captains for their ineptitude and remonstrating with Hughes over the shame his criminal family name will bring onto his only daughter. It's an aimless soap opera.

Still not too sure why Denny appears in this film given his relative stature, though his performance is assured where those of his peers in this film leave more than a little to be desired - two obvious line fluffs and frequent jump cuts suggesting a very amateurish production is in the making. Even by mid-thirties poverty row standards, the "Midnight Phantom" is a late-night yawn.

Chief of police Jim Farley (as James A. Sullivan) agrees to give lieutenant Lloyd Hughes (as Dan Burke) permission to marry his daughter, reputed "Columbia Pictures" logo model Claudia Dell (as Diana Sullivan). This disappoints criminologist Reginald Denny (as David Graham), who also wants to marry Ms. Dell. After Mr. Hughes' juvenile delinquent brother is involved in an embarrassing criminal incident, Mr. Farley rejects Hughes' request for his daughter's hand in marriage; and, Mr. Denny finds himself back in the competition.

*** Midnight Phantom (11/27/35) Bernard B. Ray ~ Reginald Denny, Claudia Dell, Lloyd Hughes

With no plot continuity, half of the movie comprised of stock footage, and coupled with high school drama club performances, Midnight Phantom (which has no relevance to the story) is an unmitigated disaster. I gave it a 2 rating only because of Reginald Denny from The Shadow movies fame.

This bizarrely paced thriller gets it all wrong for some odd reason. Instead of killing off the person who needs to be killed (and we find out early that that person is going to be killed, the way he sets himself and the characters up) and then creating a mystery leading to the solving of the case, the film introduces us to characters, sets up ridiculous some ridiculous family dramas, and THEN gets around to the murder in the final 15 minutes or so, and goes on to solve it in that time! As usual, it's the guy you least expect that does the deed, but I had my suspicions from the start! Anyways, the bad guy is executed, and one of the characters says, "Gee!" to that. I agree. This movie is fun to watch though for the bizarre story structure though, and the pacing makes it quite entertaining.