Midnight Phantom

Dreary tale of nothing that centres around a city police precinct in which the cranky chief (Farley) becomes the target of an apparently disgruntled regional captain, while his daughter (Dell) frets about her imminent marriage to precinct hotshot (Hughes) whose younger brother was exposed to be a criminal, tainting both his position in the Force and with his future wife and in-law.

Reginald Denny co-stars as the charismatic, cigar-making professor who can diagnose a criminal from just a line-up, a performance he duly displays for the precinct at midnight leading to the anti-climactic five-minute whodunit. The final five minutes treats the audience to a pointless epilogue involving a picnic; something to which you can look forward. As for the first fifty minutes, there's very little material on which to comment, just Farley berating his captains for their ineptitude and remonstrating with Hughes over the shame his criminal family name will bring onto his only daughter. It's an aimless soap opera.

Still not too sure why Denny appears in this film given his relative stature, though his performance is assured where those of his peers in this film leave more than a little to be desired - two obvious line fluffs and frequent jump cuts suggesting a very amateurish production is in the making. Even by mid-thirties poverty row standards, the "Midnight Phantom" is a late-night yawn.

It's difficult to know who to recommend this poverty row obscurity to. While it's technically a mystery, it barely functions as such due to the way in which it's structured. For the first three-quarters of the film you could be forgiven for wondering where exactly this movie is going. We are introduced to an array of characters who work for a police chief. We are made aware that all of these people have a grudge of sorts against the man. But, aside from a brief car chase involving cops and robbers, the narrative is basically a lot of melodrama; that is until, with fifteen minutes of the movie remaining, the chief is murdered in a darkened room populated by all of the cast members. So the mystery only lasts for about ten minutes before the killer is unmasked and we are treated to the very pointless epilogue. It has to be said, however, that the amazingly inept plot structure is the only thing that stands out about this film.

Midnight Phantom is almost a movie about nothing. Even the title is ridiculously misleading and meaningless. It clocks in at just under an hour so it is at least mercifully short. I can only recommend this to poverty row completists, although I would be surprised if there is such a thing.

A new police chief is murdered and almost all of the suspects are cops.

This is a very talky movie. People talk and talk and talk and talk and it gets dull very quickly since this seems to be more about talk than action. A case in point is that most of the first third of this film is the police chief talking to various members of the police force about how he wants them to change their corrupt or incompetent ways or else he'll fire them or lock them up. While it sets up the suspects nicely it doesn't do much for keeping interest. Eventually Reginald Denny shows up playing a professor of criminology and things pick up as we at last get to the murder. The second half of the film is a battle between Denny's science vs the tried and true police methods. Its a bit more interesting than whats gone before but its still long winded.

Not a bad film as such its just not very compelling. There are too many characters and too much talk and it really just doesn't grab you the way it should. Is it worth seeing? If you like old mysteries its worth a shot but I'd see if you can borrow a copy off a friend since its not worth renting or purchasing since you'll probably watch it just once.

This is the creme de la creme of awful. It is the slowest moving, dullest thing on four legs. The first third of the film takes place in the office of the police chief, a windbag who calls people in and berates them for various reasons. He apparently is under fire from politicians. There are so many substrains, most of which are unrelated and have nothing to do with a plot. At one point the young male lead kills his own brother and is then not allowed to marry the chief's daughter because he didn't disclose his connection to a criminal. If you watch the film, you'd know that he just found out as the guy was dying. There are others. The chief has a secretary half his age, the daughter of one of the ugliest women I've ever seen. The old lady is a policewoman and insists the chief marry her daughter because the two have been seen together. Then there is this hilarious scene where a series of prisoners are paraded in front of criminologist Reginald Denny. He comments on their criminal appearance (shifty eyes and lack of ambition, for example), and tells what their traits are. He hits on all cylinders. Reefer Madness has nothing on this one. I'm so happy I got to see it and would like to watch it with friends. It's so sincere and so awful.

Ludicrous dialog! Impossible plot! Execrable acting! Looks like it was shot in one afternoon. How can you not love a movie where someone says "When the lights went out, I held up the glass table top between us. So you're poison dart missed me!" In the scene right after the police chief has (hysterically) dressed down all of his subordinates and they're all filing out of the room, you can hear someone, presumably the director, shouting "Now call back Silverstein" just before the chief says "Inspector Silverstein, a word with you please." A highlight has a "professor of criminology" accurately guessing the offences of criminals in a line up based solely on their appearance. These ultra-cheap movies of the 30's and 40's, made by companies long out of business like PRC, Reliable Pictures, Chesterfield are ghoulishly fascinating, when they're not the routine westerns that were made by the hundreds. The interesting thing is when they feature a name actor (this one has Reginald Denny!) at some really low point in his/her career. You have to wonder, where were they shown? What did audiences of the time think of them? When we hear that half the films made before 1950 are lost, I suspect that most of the lost films are of this calibur and aside from the weirdness value, it's no great tragedy, though there were the rare gems in this bunch....