A Shot in the Dark

Caught this film on Hastings Mystery Theater (YouTube) and was surprised at how good the mystery was. The only actor I recognized was Robert Warwick who plays Joseph Harris the father of the young male lead Ken Harris (Charles Starrett).

The film has a truly gruesome opening. After an evening out, Ken Harris returns to his dormitory suite on the Dartmouth campus. Ken is unable to open the door to his room, and his roommate doesn't respond to the knocking on the door. Ken goes down a flight and enters the dorm room below his. There Ken sleeps in an unoccupied bed, but he is awakened by the sound of a low banging on the window. Ken goes to the window, and opens it to see the dead body of his roommate with a noose about his neck. He wakes the student whose room he is in. Let's say the scene gets more gruesome as Ken goes to get a doctor while the other student hauls the dead body up. The relative calmness of both boys makes one wonder what is considered normal on the campus.

The university decides to ask Ken's father, Joe Harris, a well-known lawyer with an interest in criminology, to take on what turns out not to be a suicide but a murder.

As the story plays out there are numerous clues and two additional murders. It even seems possible that Ken's dad could be a suspect.

Some bad acting aside, the film provides a good mystery that will likely have any viewer, including me, making several bad guesses as to who the murderer is. Definitely worth a watch.

While at a party at his college campus Ken Harris gets a call from his dad saying that he's nearby and would like to see him. Ken goes that night to pick up his dad and bring him back to stay in his dorm room. Ken sends his dad up to the room while he parks the car. When Ken arrives at his room he finds that the door is locked and neither his dad nor his roommate will answer the knocks. Ken then crashes for the night in a downstairs friends room. In the morning Ken is awoken by a banging outside. It seems that Ken's roommate has committed suicide by hanging himself out the window. It quickly transpires that what appeared to be suicide was in fact murder and the murderer is still on the prowl.

This is a solid little mystery that unfolds in such away as to keep you glued to the screen wondering whats going to happen next. The investigation, nominally headed by Ken's dad moves along at a good clip and in a logical progression with events, including more murders, coming out of what is revealed in the story. Each clue leads to something else which leads to something else. This is one of the few times that you can feel the source novel actually working well with in the frame work of a 60 minute movie, and where the compression of the story doesn't lead to a moment or two where something seems to come completely out of left field. The film is also unique in that contrary to most mysteries of the period (or mysteries period) the local cops are not buffoons. While they admit that murder is beyond them (the deputy says about all they're used to is speeders) they do make a go of investigating the crime and acquit themselves nicely.

As good as the film is its not perfect. The pacing is a tad slow since the film is has a great deal of talk (though this is not a bad thing). There is one moment where the scenes seem to have been placed out of order with Ken's dad talking about working with the police and in the next scene has a conversation with the police about working with them. The film's main sin is that while we get all of the required information there are times where characters and situations get the short shrift. There are times when I felt we could have known a character more or that perhaps they could have added a scene that lead to something (the discovery of the murder weapon for example).

Still this is a great little flick. Worth a bag of popcorn and some soda on the couch with some friends.(Possibly as part of Murder on Campus which has some of the same cast and also set on a college campus)

A student's suicide turns out to be murder. Murder mystery in which the police are happy to sit back and let an amateur criminologist, played with authority by character actor Robert Warwick, lead the investigation. Passable entertainment despite the inevitable far-fetched resolve.

Midway through this Chesterfield mystery, I found myself wondering: Is this plot awfully complex, or just awfully muddled? A suicide that is a murder; a stolen letter; an old photo in an album; odd family relations and relationships….Various characters guard strange secrets of the past and present. But I'm still not sure how much sense it makes.

Three male leads are at the center of the story. Charles Starrett is of course the rather upright and dashing young student whose roommate is bumped off in the film's opening moments. Starrett immediately calls for assistance from his criminologist father, played by Robert Warwick in the best Holmesian style. It seems like a promising setup—a father-son team parsing clues, nabbing bad guys. But, for me at least, Starrett's character came across as overly deferential and Warwick's as annoyingly smug. Third-billed is the great Edward Van Sloan as a professor (naturally) interested in the parties involved; his character is darkly appealing but, alas, not on screen often enough.

Overall, it's not a bad film, exactly, but I just couldn't feel it gain any momentum. The comic relief supplied by the moronic sheriff and his deputy is rather lame, and the rest of the cast seem to take things altogether too seriously. And there's one large red herring that would have added intrigue had it been a "real" clue....Anyway, early practice, I guess, for director Charles Lamont, who would go on to bigger and better and less serious things.

While many of the era's murder mysteries incorporated elements of other genres, such as comedy, action or those beloved old dark house kind of horror movies to shake things up a bit (or to make you forget about plot holes), this one uses no such things, which results in a quite serious tone and a very plot centered script. Which could be a good thing, but unfortunately the movie (which is now in public domain) fails in so many ways.

The budget was pretty low (the movie was produced by Chesterfield, shortly before it was merged into Republic, to avoid closure due to their debts), which would not be a problem itself, but the whole film is way too talkie, while the confusing plot drags around quite slow, with not much going on: the incompetent, but unfunny police officer admits that they don't know much about murder and do not really wish to be in charge (just what!?) and the son-and-father duo that ends up handling the case does not do much detective work either, as they often simply run into important evidence accidentally.

The acting is also pretty weak with people reacting to events in totally unlikely ways. For example when they discover the body of Byron, the first victim or when later others are told about his death, they are all like "Oh, really?" with almost zero emotion shown. Even when his mother learns about his death, we see her smiling, showing childhood pictures of the boy just moments later. The way the other murders are committed is rather unrealistic, the actors that are supposed to play collage boys are quite obviously much older than they should be and the plot, which revolves around some complicated family matters and a lot of money is just too muddled and uninteresting to keep up your attention for 70 minutes. Still, it is not a complete waste of time, but not really recommended either.