The Midnight Warning

A sister & brother check into a posh hotel. Shortly thereafter, the brother is missing, & despite the sister's inquiries, no one admits to ever having seen the man. Meanwhile, a sniper shoots bullets through the window of the room that the brother & sister stayed in. Is there any connection between these events?

There's a little mystery, a little terror, some spookish pranks, and an eerie mortuary scene that is quite effective in delivering scares, however I found the rest of the film quite average and flat at times and a little confusing - but the denouement at the end for the "strange" going-ons is surprising and offbeat.

Supposedly based on a real incident which occurred at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. This film fits into the "Pre-Code" genre, only because the "baddies" are not brought to "justice" at the end. The acting is pretty good, although I have to smile when I remember that William "Stage" Boyd was shortly afterwards involved in a famous Hollywood sex scandal, which temporarily ruined the career of William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd when his photograph was erroneously printed in a newspaper along with the scandal story; I can understand why reporters thought it was the "Hoppy" Boyd & not the "Stage" Boyd! A bit too talky at times, but an interesting film nonetheless.

"Eyes of Mystery" is actually a rerelease title for 1932's "Midnight Warning," from Mayfair Pictures Corporation, an independent outfit that produced or distributed nearly 40 titles in seven years. William 'Stage' Boyd is back in detective form ("Murder by the Clock"), supported by Poverty Row stalwarts Huntley Gordon, Hooper Atchley, and Henry Hall ("gosh all fish hooks!"). While the plot clearly echoes the true events depicted in Terence Fisher's "So Long at the Fair," this was perhaps the only period in early Hollywood that they could produce a conclusion in this vein, some two years prior to the notorious Hays Code. Claudia Dell was used to midnight mysteries, with future roles in 1935's "Midnight Phantom" and 1944's "Meeting at Midnight" (aka "Black Magic"), a Monogram Charlie Chan and, sadly, her final film.

"After a young couple and the woman's brother check into a hotel, the brother turns up missing. While no one at the hotel seems to know where the man is, let alone acknowledge he was even there, the woman decides to hire an investigator to look into the matter. The investigator, his assistant and the young couple find some strange circumstances at the hotel, which lead them to a shocking discovery," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Ah… it's the old vanishing relative plot. This one moves along quite nicely, thanks to writer John Thomas Neville beginning his version from an interesting angle: hotel patron Hooper Atchley (as Steven Walcott) calls upon an old friend, investigator William Boyd (as William Cornish), after finding a human ear bone in his fireplace. Then, Mr. Atchley collapses… The unraveling mystery is engaging; and, the movie works as a filmed stage play.

Columbia Pictures model Claudia Dell (as Enid Van Buren) gets to play frightened in a mortuary, and Robert Harron's brother John ("Johnny" Harron, as Erich) has a good expositional scene explaining his involvement in the intrigue. Forgotten film veteran Phillips Smalley (as Dr. Bronson) is another asset. "Midnight Warning" obviously needs Alfred Hitchcock's direction, and a more satisfying conclusion (see "The Lady Vanishes").

***** Midnight Warning (11/15/32) Spencer Gordon Bennet ~ William Stage Boyd, Claudia Dell, John Harron

The Midnight Warning (1932)

* (out of 4)

Really bland mix of mystery and horror has a group staying in a hotel shocked when a member dies. It appears to be murder so a detective tries to figure out what's going on before more people turn up dead.

THE MIDNIGHT WARNING was just one of hundreds of films to deal with murders in a trapped setting. They took place in hotels, cabins, lodges, houses and various other settings and more often than not they were rather forgettable. Sometimes you'd get lucky with an interesting movie but sadly this here isn't that and in fact it's really one of the worst that I've seen from the genre.

Even at just 62 minutes the film seems to run three times as long. The biggest problem is that the acting and dialogue are just so poor that it's really hard to keep interest in anything going on. Even worse is the fact that the low-budget makes for some pretty boring scenes of people just standing around with this bad dialogue going back and forth. I will admit that the twist ending manages to throw you off and there's one good sequence where a woman is surrounded by dead bodies and hears them "speaking" to her. Still, THE MIDNIGHT WARNING is a film you can easily skip.