The Mystery of the 13th Guest

Perhaps I am not as well-versed in movie history as others are. I don't know what a Monogram film is.

I like mysteries and it was recommended in Netflix. I was surprised to see it only lasted an hour. Of course, well before the hour was up I was grateful for that fact.

This is not a good movie. It's akin to a bad short story; you just have to finish even though you know it's not going to get any better.

The grandfather dies and the folks who were at dinner 13 years before begin dying off. Who is responsible? We eventually find out, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why that person is responsible.

The dialogue is insipid. The acting is not good. The lighting doesn't seem too good either. There's the hard-edge detective and the campy one-liners. It just didn't work.

Spare yourself; there are better movies out there. There's nothing about this that I find worth sitting through.

The Mystery of the 13th Guest is a not a typical example of the 40's Monogram pictures productions. This one outshines most of the typical "B" trappings they produced in the early 40's. 13th Guest made the most out of the typical wartime budget's and dimly lighted set versions that Monogram made famous. The female lead, Helen Parrish made it special because she was very uder-rated to say the least. She carries the film and adds some really good action to an otherwise typical haunted house movie. She reprises the Ginger Rogers role of 1932 and adds flare and style to the character. Dick Purcel is great as the wisecracking reporter. He died soon after the film was released and it was ashame as they really sparked together. I have not seen the film on tv since the late 40's and won't either. Most of the Monograms features were struck on celuloid so they aren't around anymore. My print is on Kodak safty film so it will never die!

Mystery of the 13th Guest, The (1943)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent "B" movie about a family getting together for the eldest to announce that his will won't be read for another thirteen years after his granddaughter turns twenty-one. Thirteen years later the guests at that party start turning up dead so it's up to a private detective (Dick Purcell) and a Police Lt. (Tim Ryan) to figure out who's doing the killings. If you're looking for high art then you're not going to find it here but if you're looking for an hour to kill with some light entertainment then you might find this Monogram quickie entertaining. Old 'One Shot' Beaudine certainly doesn't do anything overly special with this murder-mystery but he at least keeps the pace up so that the brief 60-minutes go by quickly and without too much dead space. The screenplay itself certainly doesn't try to do anything ground breaking but it keeps the characters interesting and the murderer under wraps until the very end, which is pretty much all you can ask for out of a film like this. Purcell does a pretty good job with his role and makes the fast-talking wise guy fun to watch. His back-and-forth banter with Ryan is pretty entertaining and Helen Parrish makes for a good female lead. Frank Faylen plays the dimwitted cop and gets a few laughs. The rest of the cast are serviceable and give pretty much what you'd expect out of them. The mystery itself is a pretty good one as I found the murder weapon (an electrical wire attached to a phone) to be quite fun and all the horror trappings like the mysterious hidden doors and traps to help keep things moving. No one is ever going to mistake this film for a classic but if you're a fan of the genre then you'll know that there's much worse out there.

A young girl arrives at her ancestral home and is promptly murdered-- -or is she? Twelve years earlier the murdered woman, as a little girl, had attended a birthday party for her dying grandfather. Thirteen partygoers were invited but only twelve attended. The thirteenth guest was death.

Now, in the present, the original twelve guests are members of the family fighting over the will and someone wants the money badly enough to kill for it. Detective Dick Purcell is called in to solve the crime, aided by comic sidekicks and the usual inept policemen who only seem to inhabit "B" mysteries. Directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, this 60 minute quickie is a darn good version of the Armitage Trail mystery and manages to be a little better that its 1932 predecessor-----though for some reason the 1943 film is much more difficult to see.

Mystery of the 13th Guest (1943)

I have to admit, I started this with too high expectations--it had great mood, great B-movie sets, and a plot that sounded great in an Agatha Christie way. But then the corny style of acting kicked in--it's a kind of pre-TV flippant entertainment, purposely aiming for a slight, silly humor at the expense of real drama. Too bad.

So I watched the rest with half an eye, which was enough. The plot is highly contrived and highly important--it's a whodunnit, for sure, with a series of growing clues and new characters. The detective is just too absurd to work--he doesn't even serve as a parody of the newly crystallizing Bogart kind of hardboiled detective. And there a too many scenes with a lot of people standing around a room (a living room or a detective's office), with not a lot of clear tension of development, just exaggerated chitchat.

So, why watch it at all? I'm not sure! But I did, from the side, and there are some great stereotypes (call them clichés) at work--dark shadows of men in fedoras, a haunted old house, a murder and the threat of more murder, even a terrific (haha) trap door. It verges on Three Stooges kind of humor now and then but lacks the true slapstick genius (at times) of those guys (who began in the 1930s and were really big by the 1943), but you can sense an echo of them (one of the detectives even makes little Curly and Moe noises). This version of the movies is actually a remake of a better if not brilliant 1932 film, starring a young Ginger Rogers (and available to see free and legal at this site: www.archive.org/details/The_Thirteenth_Guest).

If you are really feeling frivolous, this might be fun. But your are forewarned.