Dead by Morning

Patrick Holt and Diana Dors arrive at their new home in the country. He plans to start his new murder mystery, when in stalks Cicely Courtneidge demanding a room for the night and giving orders. The next morning, the couple discovers her dead in an armchair. PC Jack Hulbert shows up, followed by Inspector Joss Ambler.

It's the first movie with Hulbert and Miss Courtneidge in more than a decade, and this comedy-mystery is directed by Leslie Arliss at farce speeds. Unfortunately, there's little in it witty and very funny once Miss Courtneidge is reduced to a corpse. Holt and Miss Dors are a bit too sedate, Ambler is grouchy, and A.E. Matthews shows up at the beginning; he's funny, but then he vanishes, irrelevant to the plot.

It's a common issue with comedies that have a story to tell: the laughs are in the beginning, then the fun is abandoned in favor of the plot. It's a fair mystery, and it's good to see Hulbert and Miss Courtneidge on the screen, but despite some bits and bobs, it's dull.

Patrick Holt is "Dax", a successful crime writer who is suffering from a bit of a mental block. His wife "Kate" (Diana Dors) suggest they take a break in the country where they encounter the eponymous "Miss Tulip" (Cicely Courtneidge) - but not for long. On coming down in the morning, they discover the French windows open and their guest shot dead. The police arrive and under the investigative gaze of "Insp. Thorne" (Joss Ambler) the game is afoot. Dors was always a very light-weight actress and offers little of substance here, but at times there is a bit of fun tit-for-tat dialogue between the policeman and the novelist to keep this otherwise entirely forgettable comedy off the rocks. The ending is not quite the stuff of Agatha Christie but it's a little bit quirky and all-in-all this is actually quite a passable, low-budget, hour or so of bucolic sleuthing.

Since this is film stars Diana Dors the title seems to be a sexy comedy but it's not what you think. Diana Dors is the wife of a mystery writer, Patrick Holt, who is experiencing writer's block. Ms. Dors has rented a cottage for the in the country to help. But their peaceful refuge is invaded by the demanding elderly Miss Tulip who claims she is being stalked and demands they do what they can to make her comfortable in their cottage. When things run to murder and the police arrive, writer husband is hard pressed to investigate the mystery while being demeaned by police inspector Joss Ambler. The real fun is between Dors and brow-beaten constable Jack Hulbert. While the lightweight mystery unfolds, Dors and Hulbert keep a light comic element working. It's not any great shakes, but fun to watch Dors' comic talent shine.

I wrote this after seeing the film on TV and reading the other reviews which i felt were very harsh. The main problem with the film is that it seems to fall between comedy and mystery with not quite enough of either, also the pace is poorly judged with a lot of messing around in the first 90% of the film before the mystery is solved in the last 5 minutes . It reminded me of long ago school homework when you start well but lose interest and put down anything to get it finished. But despite that this is basically a harmless glimpse of a world which is nowadays almost forgotten. There are some good lines, Diana Dors looks gorgeous and Hulbert and Courtneidge are charming in their roles and overall this is pleasantenough way of filling an afternoon.

This is an ill-advised and poorly executed revival of an out-dated type of comedy. Although purporting to be set in contemporary times (i.e. 1954), the nature of the plot and the style of its exposition are redolent of films made twenty years earlier, a feeling reinforced by the inclusion in the cast of those two old stalwarts of 1930s comedy, Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge.

The central plot is a murder mystery of the artificial Agatha Christie type, the contrived solution to which is expounded in dialogue so swiftly in the closing minutes of the film that after its test screening, one baffled viewer's notes read, "Who murdered who? And why?" The comedy is provided by Hulbert and Courtneidge individually, rather than in tandem, and consists of an embarrassing reprise of their well-worn bits of shtick. Courtneidge does not launch into her "two dozen double damask dinner napkins" routine, but one would hardly be surprised if she did.

Diana Dors is her usual beautiful self, but is ill-matched with Patrick Holt as her husband. The actress Ida Patlanski listed in the cast is also known as Pat Terry-Thomas, the wife of Terry-Thomas the English comic actor, whose dog Archie plays the role of Archie in this film.

The film has been restored and issued on DVD by the British Film Institute, together with production details which reveal that the final version of the film was influenced by the script writer, the head of the commissioning company, the producer, the director, one of the actors (Hulbert), and the British film censor, which perhaps explains its lack of cohesion.

Three years earlier, RKO had issued a comedy thriller, "Behave Yourself!" which too was about a young married couple becoming inadvertently embroiled in crime, in which too the wife's name was Kate and the dog's name was Archie. One wonders if the screen writer of "Miss Tulip" had seen that film and had residual memories of it. If so, it is a pity that he had not also remembered that the American film was not a mystery, the precise roles of all the miscreants being spelled out in the opening credits, leaving room for a great deal of comic action with far more entertaining results.