The King Murder (1932)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

To me, this movie is perfection.

How sad is this?

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Perhaps with a better script and a higher budget, this could have been a fun melodrama of how a blackmailed blackmailing chorus girl is bumped off and how her case progresses. Dorothy Reveier is only on screen for a few minutes as the victim, so there isn't enough time to set up interest in her story. She is described later in the film having been a little nobody when picked up and put in jewels and furs, the apparent cause of her turning bad. Several suspects come in and out of the story with little detail of what lead to them wanting her dead. Vampish Natalie Moorehead plays against type as a victim for a change rather than a calculating perpetrator of mischief. This creaks along with a lot of talk and long pauses in dialog which makes it on occasion unbearable. Conway Teale headlines as the detective. The conclusion and cause of the victim's death is pretty clever, but much of the remainder of the film lacks in interest.

Well this one was quite absorbing right up to the end with the revelation of the murder weapon and the killer. A poisoned Victrola needle - What!!?? How clumsily inept would you have to be to scratch yourself with one of those, especially on top of your hand the way cop Dugan was dispatched. And did Van Kempen (Robert Frazer) purposely wound himself with the same needle? I'm not going back to find out; by that time I thought the suspense of setting up all the other suspects was pretty much wasted.You see, the exposition of the story was pretty intricate for an early 1930's flick, and there weren't the type of plot holes you could usually drive a getaway car through. There were plenty of suspects who would have had a reason to get Miriam King (Dorothy Revier) out of the way, who by the way was a fairly accomplished juggler the way she handled her men. Say, wouldn't it have been great if Chief Barton (Conway Tearle) had put the finger on Elizabeth Hawthorn in that billiard scene right near the end? I thought that was the direction they were going, especially the way she might have telegraphed her guilt when she first learned of Miss King's murder. I think that would have been a more satisfying conclusion than watching Van Kempen lay out the whole story as he died in the ambulance.My best takeaway from the picture is right up there in my summary line, the bit about 'not talking to a gaga', spoken by Miss King before she met her demise. Couldn't help but relate to the current antics of pop celebrity Lady Gaga who's a walking definition of the word - self absorbed, infatuated and silly all at the same time.

I watched this movie as an entry on one of those "50 Movies" DVD sets (Crime Classics), so maybe I didn't get the highest quality video around. Nevertheless, I found this movie to be stultifyingly bad. The script is muddled and confusing. Characters come and go and the time line is jarring and confusing. The acting generally sub-par, with the best performance being turned in by Maurice Black, probably best known for his role as "Little Arnie" Lorch in "Little Caesar". The audio is terrible and at time unintelligible. The cinematography is primitive and looks many times as if filmed in a closet. Don't get me wrong, I like "bad" movies but more in the vein of Ed Wood bad. This film has nothing to offer the viewer on any level.

Another low-budget item distributed by Chesterfield Pictures. This one is a dull murder-mystery with Dorothy Revier as a gold digger who ends up murdered. Plenty of suspects with plenty of bad acting and cliché goings-on. But there is that murder weapon (a poisoned record needle)! And when Frazer is outed as the murderer, he confesses, then poisons himself with the needle! Star Conway Tearle plays the dogged inspector. Stock music on the soundtrack. And, lastly, co-star Marceline Day, so effective and fetching as Buster Keaton's love interest in 'The Cameraman' is neither in this film. She is rather plain-looking and her acting is terrible. A shame.