Audience Member
another B movie suspenser
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
Full Review
bill t
This bizarrely paced thriller gets it all wrong for some odd reason. Instead of killing off the person who needs to be killed (and we find out early that that person is going to be killed, the way he sets himself and the characters up) and then creating a mystery leading to the solving of the case, the film introduces us to characters, sets up ridiculous some ridiculous family dramas, and THEN gets around to the murder in the final 15 minutes or so, and goes on to solve it in that time! As usual, it's the guy you least expect that does the deed, but I had my suspicions from the start! Anyways, the bad guy is executed, and one of the characters says, "Gee!" to that. I agree. This movie is fun to watch though for the bizarre story structure though, and the pacing makes it quite entertaining.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The Midnight Phantom
Starring: James Farley, Lloyd Hughes, Reginald Denny, and Claudia Dell
Director: B.B. Ray
When Police Chief James Sullivan (Farley) shakes up his department from top to bottom, both good cops and corrupt cops are mad enough to kill him. When he is murdered a day later at a special lecture by famed criminologist Prof. David Graham (Denny), virtually everyone in the lecture hall is a possible suspect, including the chief's own daughter (Dell) and her fiance (Hughes). Has a member of the law enforcement community managed to committ the perfect crime, or will Prof. Graham unmask the diabolically clever murderer?
"Midnight Phantom" is a murder mystery film that takes entirely too long in getting to the murder part. When it gets there, it's a laughable crime that's got one of the most pathetic frames ever put on film. Further, it's got an even lamer resolution.
The only decent thing about the script is that it actually has a proper story structure--well, if one forgives it takes forever to wind up. We've got the introduciton of the suspects, we've got the crime, we've got the solution... and then, in a step exceedingly rare in films before the 1960s, we have a proper denoument! Unfortunately, this doesn't make up for the overall insipidness of the film in general. It's a bad mystery and a bad melodrama wrapped into one, and the only reason the film isn't too boring to watch is that there's enough energy here to trick viewers into thinking that something is about to happen.
I viewed this one, because I greatly enjoyed Denny's performances as Algie in the "Bulldog Drummond" series, and while I think it was nice to see him play something other than a buffoon, even he is dissapointing in this one. One can see him (and James Farley) struggling to rise above the awful material they are working with, but here that would be like trying to swim in a pair of mob-fitted cement overshoes.
"Midnight Phantom" is of interest only to those with the greatest interest in the B-movies of the 30s and 40s... and even then, I reocmmend you stay away from the version I viewed, which was the one releaed by Alpha Video. The print the DVD was produced from was so damaged that several seconds of film is missing at several points throughout, and one missing bit of film presents key information that the characters in the scene are reacting to. One can puzzle out what they were looking at from the turgid dialogue that follows, but the viewing experience is not enhanced.
(On the other hand, I imagine that there may not be other editions of this film out there. "Midnight Phantom" is definately one of those movies that really doesn't need to be preserved for future generations.)
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
Full Review
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