Midnight Manhunt

***Major Spoilers*** With free-lance hit man Jelke, George Zucco, tracking down his quarry diamond thief Peter Bernett, George E. Stone, from Uruguay South America to a mid-town Manhattan hotel he surprises and guns him down when he answers the door. Taking $250,000.00 in diamonds that Barnett had on him Jelke goes to call a cab to have Barnett's body taken and later dumped, by Jelke, in the East River.

There's also an alert for a New York gangster Joe Wells who's been either dead or on the lamb for five years and the state is willing to pay $5,000.00 to find and prove who he is, dead or alive. You see both Peter Barnett & Joe Wells are one and the same person. Wells badly hurt from being shot by Jelke struggles to his feet and staggers across the street from his hotel to the Last Gangster Wax Museum and collapses and dies.

Later girl reporter Sue Gallagher, Ann Savage, finds the dead Wells on the museum staircase and hides it so that she can later get the reward for proving that the elusive Joe Wells case has finally been solved. Unknown to her and the police and Sue's friends Jelke has a lot more to gain if Joe Wells stays lost then they do in having him found. Humorous crime/drama about a stiff, Joe Wells, who stiffed everyone looking for him by getting stiffed and hidden in the car trunk of police let.Max Hurley,Don Beddoe, who's been in charge of finding the stiff for five years.

George Zucco seems too refined and sophisticated to be a hoodlum in the movie, he's much better playing mad doctors and scientists. There's also that expert in the proper use of diction in the English language Leo Gorcey, Clutch Tracy, in the film playing an attendant at the wax museum who shows us how he can magically make a lighted cigar butt last for over an hour which was the length of the movie.

There isn't much to say about this one. It involves a body (which should be decomposing) being dragged around by a series of people. There are a couple of reporters who use absolutely no common sense in the process of trying to use the body to get a scoop. There's Leo Gorcey, playing the Bowery Boys character, with the malapropisms and the general insensitivity. George Zucco is running around, trying to get his hands on the body. Keeping a low profile probably would have protected him, but this doesn't occur to him. Everything is silly and far fetched and probably played well in a theatre on Saturday afternoon as a bit of escapist drivel in the forties.

Ann Savage and William Gargan star as rival newspaper reporters in this wild murder comedy complete with wax dummies, a wandering corpse, dumb cops, and George Zucco at his sinister best.

Leo Gorcey is very funny as a helper and general chatterbox at the Last Gangster Wax Museum. He toys around with the electric chair exhibit and tosses off a fair number of Bowery Boys-style malapropisms ("It's an optical delusion").

Zucco opens the picture by creeping into a hotel room, shooting a man and stealing a small case of diamonds; besides the mysterious Zucco and the adventurous reporters, police detectives Paul Hurst (dumb flatfoot) and Don Beddoe (harassed and exasperated lieutenant) are soon also attempting to track down the murdered man's body, which appears then disappears more than once.

A silly subplot concerns Savage and Gargan—a onetime romantic couple for whom, as Gorcey puts it, "the milk of romance slightly curdled." Gargan persists in disrupting Savage's efforts toward solving the case and landing the big story, for reasons that are less than clear; their conflict is supposed to be cute but is instead mildly irritating.

Overall, it's predictable but still very enjoyable; while the dialog may be lowbrow, it's still moderately clever, and good humor and energetic performances make up for lack of suspense and surprises. Good fun for fans of B movies—or any of these stars.

This movie has all of the charm that makes old movies fun. Tough newspaper reporters compete with one another as they deal with a murdering villain and an arrogant police detective. I cannot recall seeing Ann Savage in anything else, but right away I liked her. She had the look and presence that should have made her a bigger star. Although she gets second billing in the credits, I think she is the star that really pushes the plot the most. Leo Gorcey adds a fun comedy element that keeps the movie bouncing along. The action starts at the very beginning and keeps building until the end. All the events take place in one night as the different characters are involved with finding, moving, hiding, and searching for a mobster's corpse. For what appears to be a B movie, the whole movie keeps up a steady pace for plot twists. If you love movies of the 40's in general this movie will be a pleaser.

Made in 1945 by Paramount's reliable Pine-Thomas "B" production company, MIDNIGHT MANHUNT is a model of what a bottom-of-the-bill programmer should be. It reminds me of the best PRC productions of the 1940s, with a mix of comedy, mysterious atmosphere, clever plot twists, and a colorful supporting cast. Leo Gorcey is given the same kind of malapropism-laden dialogue he had as a Bowery Boy; George Zucco is menacing and mysterious as only he can be; Ann Savage, of DETOUR fame, is perfect as the brash newspaperwoman; familiar faces such as Ben Welden, Don Beddoe, and Charles Halton pop up; and leading man William Gargan has always been reliable as a square-jawed, tough leading man, both in film and on radio. There's as much comedy as mystery, and both work successfully. The result is an hour of clever entertainment that represents the best 1940s "B-movie" entertainment. The plot involves a missing corpse of a mobster, but it's just something on which to hang a series of comic and mysterious elements. A great way to kill an hour on a rainy day.