Midnight Manhunt

Rating:
Summary: A Theatre-Clearer-Outer
Review: MIDNIGHT MANHUNT (1945) was a title with which I was unfamiliar, but the cast was impressive, so I selected it to round out my order. What I got for my $5 was an hour, missing from my life, that I can never, ever replace.

Okay, let's keep this short. George Zucco shoots some guy in a cheesy flophouse and takes a box of diamonds from him. The guy - who we find out later is "famous gangster" Joe Mills, missing for five years - isn't quite dead, and crawls to a nearby wax museum called the "Gangster Wax Musuem". No, I'm not kidding, and No, it's not supposed to be a joke. Anyway, a feisty female reporter (Ann Savage, of DETOUR fame) happens to live in an apartment above the wax museum, and coming home, she finds Mills' now quite dead corpse. She stashes it in the wax museum and runs upstairs to write the story. But William Gargan (a/k/a Martin Kane, Private Eye), a rival reporter and sometimes boyfriend of Miss Savage, snoops around and finds out what she's up to. As does a snoopy police lieutenant. And a snoopy night watchman. And Mr. Miggs, owner of the wax museum (played by the Bank Examiner from IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE). And Miggs' assistant, Clutch, played by Leo Gorcey, who thinks he's playing Slip Mahoney, a character that actually hadn't been invented yet ("We can figger dis out t'rough mental reduction"). Oh, and so does George Zucco, looking for the corpse he lost (Mr. Zucco, the film's star, does not have a line until 28 minutes have elapsed of the 61 minute film.) So they all chase each other around and the "comedy bits" consist of old Mr. Miggs constantly whining "I'm tired" and Clutch moidering da King's English and looking for a light for the cigar butts he picks up. And don't worry, I'm not gonna reveal the ending, mainly because I fell asleep about 50 minutes into this thing and woke up just in time to see Mr. Zucco in handcuffs and the two reporters lip-locked.

For an Alpha print and transfer, this is good indeed, perhaps the best I've seen from this cheap company. There, I've said something nice.

I imagine that this film was shown at the end of a long day to clear the folks out of the movie theatre, and I imagine it worked very well.



Rating:
Summary: Interesting Cast is Reason To Watch
Review: Midnight Manhunt is hardly a classic...frankly it's not even good. This poverty row thriller was actually produced by paramount but looks every bit like a PRC or Monogram movie.

Still the movie is intersting for the casting of Leo Gorcey of East Side Kids fame and George Zucco, horror movie vet. Zucco plays killer Jelke who knocks off a gangster and steals some diamonds off him. The body is then found by a reporter Sue Gallagher (Ann Savage) and then promptly begins disappearing and popping up all over again.

Leo Gorcey adds a fun comedy element that keeps the movie bouncing along. The action starts at the very beginning and keeps building until the end. All the events take place in one night as the different characters are involved with finding, moving, hiding, and searching for a mobster's corpse. For what appears to be a B movie, the whole movie keeps up a steady pace for plot twists.

Rating:
Summary: Good '40s B; character actors help this newspaper yarn
Review: This is one of Paramount's low-budget features produced by William Pine and William Thomas. As is customary with Pine-Thomas product, the cast is accomplished, the story is atmospheric, and the workmanship is efficient. The entire cast will be familiar to fans of old movies: William Gargan and Ann Savage as the bantering newspaper reporters trying to outscoop each other when a murder victim disappears, George Zucco as a velvet-voiced, dangerous killer, Leo Gorcey as comedy-relief office boy, Charles Halton as a worried museum curator, Don Beddoe as a frustrated detective, Paul Hurst as a bemused watchman, and George E. Stone as the missing corpse (always a fine actor: he doesn't say a word, but he expires eloquently). The pacing is good and the dialogue is snappy. The DVD derives from an old 16mm print that was very popular at some TV station -- there are frequent cue marks for station breaks, but thankfully no choppiness or serious damage. This has its own peculiar charm for movie addicts, because it looks just the way late-show movies used to look on television, before video and cable. It's an enjoyable hour for movie buffs.