Thunder in the Night

In Budapest, the wife (Karen Morley) of a cabinet president (Paul Cavanagh) receives a phone call from her first husband, believed dead by suicide. He blackmails her, threatening to reveal her as a bigamist and ruin her husband's career.

She rushes out to see him. Later he is found dead, and everything points to her.

Decent mystery with a very good cast, including Edmund Lowe as the detective on the case, the above-mentioned Morley and Cavanagh, Gene Lockhart, Una O'Connor, John Qualen, Russel Hicks, and Arthur Edmund Carewe, who had one of the strangest and most sinister faces I've ever seen. He was made for horror movies.

Some of the acting is old-fashioned, as is to be expected. Lowe is dapper and charming - you don't see this kind of mustached, sophisticated leading man anymore. Una O'Connor, John Qualen, and Gene Lockhart provide the comedy. Morley, who was later blacklisted, does a good job. She's beautifully costumed and very pretty as well.

The film is atmospheric, with a rainstorm, thunder, and lightning.

The exiled Hungarian playwrights of the early twentieth century--such as, along with Fodor, Vajda, Molnar, and Bush-Fekete--produced a lot of jolly, frothy scenarios, but this wasn't one of them. It starts with a promising mixture of high and low life, including the always appealing Karen Morley as a countess in distress. Unfortunately, the count is the always blah Paul Cavanagh, and the lead is Edmund Lowe, who, for continental charm, substitutes a lot of low-voltage swaggering and simpering. It also doesn't help that the solution of the murder is obvious as soon as it is committed. The "plot," therefore, is a drawn-out, boring evasion of the obvious facts that will puzzle only those who have never seen or read a murder mystery or who have been napping during the first ten minutes. See, rather, Fodor's Beauty and the Boss, Tales of Manhattan, or Wives Under Suspicion for the kind of witty fun the Hungarians could come up with at their best.

Count Peter Alvinczy (Paul Cavanaugh) has just been appointed to an important post, and normally this would make his wife, Madalaine (Karen Morley) happy. Unfortunately, Madalaine's dead husband is not a suicide, as has been believed for several years, after all. He is alive and blackmailing her, threatening her with the scandal of being a bigamist, which would be especially bad considering her husband's high social position. Now Maddy's first husband faked his suicide to avoid jail, so my question was, if he causes a scandal isn't he just opening himself up to the jail term he was avoiding given his newly alive status? Well, as in most of these types of films where a woman who married into high society to a good man and finds her past haunting her through no real fault of her own, Maddy does not tell her husband and continues to let this jackal of a first husband threaten and manipulate her. Unlike most of these films, her loyal private maid goes to the second husband and tells him all of Maddy's problems with the inconveniently undead first husband. Meanwhile, in a cheap rooming house, Maddy's first husband is simultaneously packing and ghosting on his current vaudeville partner on both the business and romantic front. She does not take it well. There are several other people who have reasons to dislike this guy, and then he turns up dead. Enter Edmund Lowe as Police Captain Karl Torok, out to solve the crime.

Edmund Lowe is methodical yet elegant in this part. He knows how to handle a grimy crime scene, and yet stops by the Count and Maddy's ball and trips the light fantastic for awhile. In contrast is Police Lt. Gabor (Gene Lockhart) who never saw a plate of food he didn't like, and doesn't know how to approach suspects with any kind of subtlety.

This could easily have been an 8/10 film if not for one thing. After a well moving first half, the last half of the film gets bogged down a bit in the kind of cinematic claustrophobia that marked the early talkies five and six years before. Plus the police have placed all of the suspects in one or two rooms of the boarding house where the murder took place, so you feel like you know one of five or six people did this crime, removing the anticipation of a surprise ending or one with a twist. I'll let you watch and find out as to whether or not that lack of anticipation is justified.

I don't regret watching this as it was entertaining enough, I just feel I wouldn't want to pull it out for a repeat view for any other reason than Edmund Lowe's smooth and dashing performance.

Officer Karl Torok's best friend, Count Alvinczy, is elected president of the Hungarian cabinet. Meanwhile, Alvinczy's wife, Madalaine, receives a message from a blackmailer, threatening her husband. When the blackmailer winds up dead, Madalaine appears to be the most likely suspect. Torok, however, knows the case is more complicated than it seems, and dedicates himself to revealing the truth behind this complex mystery.

Edmund Lowe as officer Karl Torok cuts an elegant yet sarcastic policeman who is caught up in a dilemma when realising the wife of his friend, the Count, could be the murderer of her late first husband and blackmailer. There's plenty of melodrama, mystery, humour and a nice stormy atmosphere to keep you watching. There are interesting characters, the twist and turns are well done, and the finale wrapped up a solid effort.

Edmund Lowe is a police captain. And a Baron. When a man is murdered in the inn across from his police station, the clues lead to Karen Morley, wife of Paul Cavanaugh, who is just about to be appointed "President of the Cabinet" in this pretty good murder mystery.

It's beautifully photographed by Bert Glennon in sharp, low-lit black & white. The cast is fine: Russel Hicks, as the police prefect who wants to shut Cavanagh out of office; Gene Lockhart as the police lieutenant, portly and pompous, to serve as the butt of Lowe's humor; Una O'Connor as the hotel drudge, and so forth. Alas, it is Lowe that annoys me. He was a capable, flamboyant actor who could give a sharp performance, but here he's a supercilious know-it-all, and he spends the second half in evening wear, and wears a top hat. When Edmund Lowe puts on a top hat and that smug manner which was his idea of charming, I look around for snowballs to throw at him, even in the middle of the summer. This is very much a matter of taste, and you may enjoy this persona; me, I find it insulting.