Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring

While in his first appearances as 'Ellery Queen', Ralph Bellamy had been very serious (almost too serious, compared to Donald Cook and Eddie Quillan, who had played the character before him), in his last film for the series he (and all the cast with him) shows his comical side for once. And surprisingly enough, this makes a fine mix with a - literally - deadly serious murder case, providing lots of corpses, greedy relatives, shady doctors, and at the same time dumb cops, even dumber crooks, and of course more funny quarrels with his assistant Nikki than ever before.

The plot, in fact, IS a classic 'whodunit', with many twists and surprises, and a challenge for every mystery fan - at least for those who've got a good sense of humor, too... So, if you don't take murder too seriously, this movie will provide you real good entertainment, varying from quite suspenseful and even creepy sections to moments of pure comedy!

This was more of a comedy than an Ellery Queen mystery from 1941.

Mrs. Stack (Blanche Yurka), the owner of a private hospital suspects her chief surgeon (George Zucco) is up to no good. Inspector Queen (Charley Grapewin) sends Ellery (Ralph Bellamy) in as a patient. Meanwhile, her son (Leon Ames), indebted to mobsters, needs his inheritance early so he arranges to have his mother murdered.

The would-be killers Page and Lou (Paul Hurst and Tom Dugan) try to run her over and fail. Mrs. Stack is injured and brought to the hospital along with Page, who broke his leg.

Nikki (Margaret Lindsay) shows up, disguised as a nurse. She mistakes what she sees going on in Mrs. Stack's room and tells Ellery the hospital is on fire. He runs out of his room, wrapped in his bedclothes with his pants on one leg and dragging his hospital bed. His other leg is stuck in a suitcase.

Turns out Mrs. Stack was indeed murdered. Page tries to get out of the hospital with the help of partner Lou, with Page posing as a corpse as he smokes a cigar under the sheet. His body is mixed up with that of Mrs. Stack.

There are more murders. It's mayhem. Nikki gets right in the middle. In fact she ends up in a trunk.

Also one of the orderlies mentions bank night. That refers to prizes given out at the movies to encourage people to attend. You can see how sometimes people might have needed an incentive.

Mrs Stack is a patron of a hospital who gets suspicious of how that establishment is being run. She calls Inspector Queen to provide her with a policeman who doesn't look like a policeman to make an undercover investigation there. Inspector Queen sends his son Ellery who manages to get himself admitted as a patient at the hospital. Mrs Stack is soon a patient there herself after getting hurt in a car collision. It's soon obvious that more than just one person is out to kill her before she is found dead after an operation.

You may find that this is one of the weaker of the seven Ellery Queen mysteries of the 1940 to 1942 period. It suffers from having too many comic characters involved. It's always good to see the saner presence of George Zucco who appears as the doctor under suspicion in this. His hospital becomes a bedlam of trolleys being switched and people under shrouds posing as corpses in order to hide themselves. And then there's people posing as nurses including a crook who does an unconvincing job on that score and also Ellery Queen's secretary who manages to get herself in uniform as well.

There are a number of characters who have murder as their intention. So it makes it difficult to guess the one who is actually responsible for the murders. I didn't get the killer until just before the reveal. Thus this film does satisfy as a whodunit even if you may tire a little of the comic knockabout.

Ralph Bellamy made four Ellery Queen movies for Larry Darmour, releasing through Columbia in the early 1940s. The fourth is a typically well constructed murder mystery. Blanche Yurka is a penny-pinching rich woman whom everyone wants dead: her son, Leon Ames, whom she won't give any money to; her daughter, Jean Fenwick, whom she keeps on a similarly tight leash; George Zucco, the head doctor at the hospital she owns, who wants to give his medical advance to the world, when she insists she owns it; and gangsters Paul Hurst and Tom Dugan, who have run her off the road to kill her on Ames' instruction. She winds up in the hospital, not dead.... but dies, strangled.... everyone wants her dead. No one could have done it.

A fine mystery and, like the others in the series, it plays fair with the fans of the genre. Unfortunately, it's a lot weaker than earlier entries, being weakened by a ot of dumb humor to eke its length out to a standard length of just over 69 minutes. It's good to see Bellamy, Margaret Linday as Nikki Porter and Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen again, but the movie would have been more pleasing had it been a bit less stereotyped. and rote.

Ralph Bellamy made his fourth and final appearance as literary sleuth Ellery Queen in Columbia's Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring. On this occasion, Ellery and his police-inspector father (Charley Grapewin) are summoned to a private hospital by its owner, philanthropist Mrs. Stack (Blanche Yurka). There've been some very weird goings-on at the hospital as of late, and Mrs. Stack wants to get to the bottom of things.

An ok-ish Ellery Queen where comedy features heavily, overriding the mystery and detecting; Margaret Lindsey and Ralph Bellamy carries things along, but it's just passable. George Zucco also stars, playing a menacing doctor.