Last night's movie was "The King Murder"(1932), an excellent pre-Code whodunit from Universal in which a young female blackmailer gets more than she bargained for. "Miriam King" (Dorothy Revier) is one step up from a prostitute. She's smart and preys on wealthy, older married men, getting them to propose to her through ultimatums. Once they do propose, she turns around and blackmails them for big money or jewelry, saying she'll tell their wives. She's got two men on the hook right now as the movie opens. No one can say she's not a hard worker. But she's also got someone blackmailing her, a male criminal associate who appears to be her former pimp. His name is "Phillip Scott" (Maurice Black). Scott shows up at Miriam's apartment demanding five grand so he can pay a gambling debt and avoid getting his legs broken. In shaking down Miriam, he uses the same tactic she does, saying he's gonna expose her schemes to her rich victims. She tries getting rid of Scott but he won't take no for an answer, so she pays him in jewelry she's accrued over the years in her dealings.
Tied into all this is a second subplot, involving a couple who live the next apartment building over. "Pearl Hope" (Marceline Day) is Miriam's ex-roommate. They had a falling out (not explained) and subsequently parted ways, but Pearl knows about Miriam's lifestyle, knows she's got a lot of expensive jewelry, and when her boyfriend "Jose Moreno" (Don Alvarado) hears about it, he makes plans to steal Miriam's jewels, which she keeps in a bedroom drawer. Living in close proximity, they can see Miriam's apartment from their living room, and they spy on her with binoculars. Jose makes an elaborate plan to create an alibi before breaking into and entering her apartment, which includes being seen by the doorman, but when he enters to rob her, he finds her stone cold dead.
Even so, he steals the jewels he came for, knowing that if he's caught as the burglar, the murder will also be blamed on him. He then concocts a story he tells Pearl to memorize and stick to. This is good writing - complex but not convoluted, and entirely understandable by the viewer without effort, which is how these kinds of plots should be. After all, we're watching so the filmmaker can tell us a story. If he can't tell it in a way that makes sense, why should we watch? But this one does, and it keeps you guessing because of the different interconnected threads. The now-deceased Miriam was blackmailing rich married men. Her small-time crime pimp was blackmailing her. He, in turn, sold her payoff jewels to a shyster pawnbroker (who actually says "Oy Vaysmere"), and Miriam was also being preyed upon, unbeknownst to her, by Pearl Hope and Jose Moreno (who was secretly sleeping with Miriam also). Super pre-Code alert: There's a line of dialogue precisely at the 8 minute mark that I'll leave you to discover for yourself, but I'll comment that I didn't know this phrase existed in 1932, or that they could use it in a movie.
The cops get into the act once Miriam is found dead by her middle-aged French maid, who is not above suspicion in her murder. The lead detective is best friends with stockbroker "Van Kempen" (Robert Frazer), one of the wealthy men Miriam was blackmailing. Kempen thought he was the only one; soon, he finds out that another sucker was also engaged to her, as the detective takes him on a round of suspect interviews.
The success of the mystery lies, as always, in the writing, and this time it's well-woven to keep the secret of Miriam's murder hidden until the very end. Two Big Thumbs. The picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night, in "Night Was Our Friend"(1951), taken from a play of the same name, Elizabeth Sellars stars as "Sally Raynor", a woman on trial for the murder of her husband. The jury is divided on her guilt; one woman holds out against the majority voting to acquit, saying, "She must've done it! She was having an affair." But when they return to court and the judge asks for their verdict, it's not guilty. Sally is set free and goes home with her friend "Dr. John Harper" (Ronald Howard), who is also her lover. "It's over, you can let it go now," he tells her. But we can see she's still holding onto something that's preventing her from moving on. Dr. Harper wants to marry her but she's pushing him away. He demands to know why, and she tells him: "Because I did it, John. I killed him. Now you know, and I've gotten away with it." Dr. Harper leaves, stunned at Sally's admission. Her dead husband was his friend. Now we relive their story in flashback.
Hubby "Martin Raynor" (Michael Gough) was a pilot flying his plane over Africa, accompanied by four male passengers. No details are given as to why they were flying there. Was Martin an adventurer? A hunter? A businessman? Some detail would've helped, but I suppose it wasn't the point. What happened is that his plane went down in a schtorm and Martin and his men were captured by savages, who marched them back to a village and, having never seen a white man, imprisoned them in dugout pits. We learn all of this from Sally. Then she reveals that, having thought Martin dead for two years, he suddenly returned to England, having escaped his captors and fled through the jungle to safety. We then see Martin return home and his ordeal is further described in brief monologues.
Now that he's back home (in flashback), Sally - a good wife - tells Dr. Harper she can't see him anymore. "Yes, we thought Martin was dead but he isn't, and he needs me. I'm sorry, John." But the problem is that Martin isn't well. He's been through the equivalent of a Vietnam bamboo-pit torture experience, only with cannibals, and he's slowly going crazy with PTSD. He can't sleep, goes for long walks in the middle of the night. Dr. Harper continues to come over, not as Sally's lover but as Martin's friend. Harper is a doctor and prescribes him some sleeping pills, which he puts under lock and key in Sally's care so that Martin won't gobble 'em all up and overdose. But the midnight walks continue. One night a local man is assaulted in his garden. Sally knows Martin did it but tells John, "He can't help himself, he's losing his mind." Indeed he is, and Michael Gough plays him like a lunatic. Gough is great actor known best as Alfred the Butler in the "Batman" films.
Doctor Harper and Sally's lawyer are doing all they can to keep Martin from being sent to the nuthouse. By now, he's talking to himself in stilted tones and even puts his hands on Sally's throat one night, when recalling how he and his men escaped from their African captors, only to get bit by poisonous jungle snakes. "I was the only one who made it, Sally," he tells her, apologizing for the stranglehold.
He's not a bad man, just out of his freaking mind, and one night, Sally decides to put him out of his misery. That's her secret, that she dissolved all of his sleeping pills in a glass of water and gave it to him. But as it turns out, he saw her do this and didn't drink it. That was the big question at her murder trial: was it a possible suicide? At the beginning of the movie, she's admitted to John Harper that she overdosed him on purpose. But is there an alternative, in-between answer? Is Sally protecting someone else?
This is a total Actor's Movie (cue Jon Lovitz: "Acting!). As mentioned, Michael Gough is unnerving as the slowly unraveling Martin. Elizabeth Sellars is vulnerable but resilient as Sally, and Ronald Howard is as dignified and forthright as always. The lawyer (Edward Lexy) drinks a lot of whiskey for tension relief. Two Big Thumbs Up and a high recommendation for "Night Was Our Friend". The picture is razor sharp. ////
And that's all for tonight. More Sixpence for my blogging music, this time their debut album from 1998. I liked a lot of '90s female vocal guitar pop and was also a fan of Belly (Tanya Donelly), 10,000 Maniacs, Julianna Hatfield, The Cranberries, Mazzy Star and Lush, my favorites along with Sixpence None the Richer. My late night is Handel's Joshua Oratorio. I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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