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.

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.

Someone is firing a gun into a hotel suite to frighten guests. But who, and why? You'll never guess the "why" part. Set almost entirely indoors, "Midnight Warning" could easily be a stage play. Which isn't altogether bad. Though the script is indeed somewhat talky, there is a secondary mystery that gives the story thematic depth.

The script is not well written. An inspector that can read suspects' lips expedites the plot but his talent isn't believable as used here. The good guys always manage to be at the right place at the right time, a time-worn cliché. And as the plot proceeds, some of the male characters blend together, so they don't stand out well as unique or interesting. The morgue sequence near the end is just downright tacky.

Yet despite the script's overall poor quality, the story's underlying premise is effective, as the ending dialogue communicates a twist that puts the entire story into perspective. I had never before seen such a plot twist.

The worst element is the film's production. B&W cinematography is awful. The visuals are so dark there were scenes that I couldn't distinguish characters from a solid black background; all I could see were their white shirts. Annoying splotches appear in a few scenes, suggesting inferior film stock. And the crackling and static that overlaid the dialogue rendered poor sound quality. Of course one needs to take into account the inferior technology that existed in those early days of film-making. Production design, film direction, and acting are below average.

The underlying premise of "Midnight Warning" is thought provoking and interesting. But viewers will need to lower their expectations due to a substandard plot and dreadful production values.

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.

The film's premise is pretty good, with some surprise twist and unusual ideas along the way and one of these unusual things about it is that this is basically a murder mystery without an actual murder. Right when his famous inspector friend comes to pay him a visit, a doctor staying in a fancy hotel gets shot through the window. He survives with the bullet only scratching his face, but the inspector takes the case with the doctor playing sidekick and they soon discover, that there is something really fishy going on at the hotel. A gorgeous blonde and his boyfriend gets involved later on and there are some unexpected twists and a rather spooky scene at a morgue to keep us intrigued.

It is not a great movie by any means, but it could be a fun little time-passer with good pacing and some interesting characters, but... then we get to the ending, that just ruins it all. The explanation just does not make any sense whatsoever, instead of wrapping up loose ends it reveals gaping plot holes and the inspector and doctor's reaction is just unrealistic and unbelievably irresponsible. Too bad.