The show must go on. This legendary expression was never more applicable than here, in this modest poverty-row movie mixture between mystery, comedy and musical. When the tenor and lead star of a fancy Hollywood Bowl opera production gets murdered live on stage during his big performance, the show (and the movie...) continues with grotesque singing for another 10-12 minutes straight before the curtain falls. Which immediately also brings me to point out the biggest default of the film. "Moonlight Murder" has a running time of barely 66 minutes, but at least half of that exists of singing, rehearsing for the live show, and the live show itself. So, unless you have a fetish for both murder mysteries and classic opera (which sounds like a very weird combo to me), you are likely to get annoyed by all the opera blah blah.
And yet, in between all the extravagant set-pieces and opera singing, there's a very neat and compelling mystery plot hidden that is well worth discovering! The opera house setting itself is impressive already, the murder - when it eventually occurs - is extremely ingenious, and the denouement is original and surprisingly unpredictable. I swear, the climax easily could have come straight out of the imagination of acclaimed whodunit authors, like Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Eccentric opera star Gino d'Acosta is a man with many enemies. He has two mistresses at once, married ones, he deliberately obstructs the career possibilities of his stand-in and ambitious personal assistant, an escaped mental patient claims d'Acosta stole his compositions, and he simply is an overall jerk to everyone during the rehearsals and backstage. Prior to the big premiere, d'Acosta receives several warnings not to sing if he wants to live. He stubbornly does, of course, but inexplicably falls dead during the show. Who is the killer, and how did he/she managed to commit a murder in front of thousands of spectators?
Forget the singing. Forget the weak attempts at slapstick. What remains is approximately 20 minutes of positively engaging mystery and suspense.
