Sinner Take All

There are several things to dislike about "Sinner Take All", a 1936 mystery movie from MGM. The main problem is the hard-to-swallow screenplay, in which the hero is an average-guy reporter who also works for a lawyer with a British accent, who represents the rich guy who owns the newspaper, who has three dissolute children with motives to kill him to inherit his money and there are several killings that take place in the family. Got that so far?

Anyway, the reporter-lawyer liaison (Bruce Cabot) decides to solve the whole mess and falls in love with the rich guy's daughter (Margaret Lindsay) and tries to prevent her from getting killed. Loads of suspects in the miscast cast, several of whose characters are insufficiently developed to be legitimate suspects. The deus ex machina is really off the wall - of course, the murderer is impossible to determine until the whole surreal plot comes to a head in the last scene.

Very unsatisfactory murder mystery with a slapped-together cast and implausible story. I rate it a five because there are mystery fans who will marvel at the cleverness of disguising the murderer, but I felt the movie does not play fair in this regard.