Saw this off TCM tonight. Plenty of descriptive reviews here, so I shall be brief. A rich old woman Mrs. Bramson, wonderfully played by Dame May Whitty, who is confined to a wheel chair, lives in a cottage in a woods in England, somewhere, where she has three servants, including her niece, Olivia (Rosalind Russell) who handles her correspondence and money matters.
The maid has a boyfriend who promised to marry her, but seems to be welching on the deal. Mrs. Bramson says she'll talk to the man, who is coming over that very day. She meets Danny (Robert Montgomery), who charms her right from the start, working his way into being hired for various duties, away from his work at a nearby hotel.
Now the crux of the story is that police are searching about the area for a missing woman who was staying at that same hotel, thinking she might have been murdered. Olivia seems to suspect Danny at first sight, and shows a dislike for him right from the start.
About a week after Danny moves in, they find the body of the missing woman-minus her head. All the while, Danny seems like the obvious killer, including scenes where he observes, and then tries to break into Mrs. Bramson's safe in her bedroom, where he knows she keeps most of her fortune-she doesn't trust banks.
I kept waiting for her to do some digging to try to find out about this man, but other than foolishly go through his bags with the other two servants, and get caught when Danny comes back unexpectedly, she seems to do nothing to learn about him other than ask him questions, to which all the answers he gives, she doesn't believe at all.
After she becomes quite scared of him, she decides to leave her aunt alone with him, but later returns the same day. A bit later, even more scared, she again goes to stay at her boyfriend's home-under the chaperoning of his mother, leaving Mrs. Bramson all alone in the house with Danny.
Then she comes back, all alone, confronts him, telling him she'll tell the police about him being the murderer-now almost certain that he has killed her aunt. Danny was about to kill her too when the police arrive and arrest him.
The worst scene happened earlier, when the police come to search Danny's items. He brought three containers from the hotel-two suitcases and a large hat box. Olivia and her friends searched the two suitcases, but found the hat box locked. With the police asking Danny for the key, for reasons that made no sense, Olivia rushes into the room and insists it is her hat box and she takes it back almost as soon as possible. The cops didn't even ask her why she would lock up a box full of her letters, as she said were in it. It seems odd to us that if the head was in that hat box, how come after well over a week it didn't emit any sort of odor?
At no time was there ever any indication that anyone else might have had something to do with the murder. The only thing "suspenseful" about this was how many more victims would he have before he was caught. Not being a "Mad Slasher" film of modern day, the count of characters we saw living was only one.
They tried to develop a theme that Olivia wound up being attracted to Danny, excited by the thought that he was a killer and led a more exciting life than she did, but that just didn't make any sense to me. She seemed dumb about him at times, but kept realizing the right way to behave, only she was too late for her aunt.
Maybe I've seen too much Hitchcock, but most of my interest here was waiting, hoping to find a real plot twist, perhaps learning that Danny was a strange man, but not the killer of anyone. But as we kept going, it became more and more clear this wasn't going to happen, leaving me with a rather disappointing last 20 minutes of an otherwise interesting movie. I figure that lowers the score to a 5.
The maid has a boyfriend who promised to marry her, but seems to be welching on the deal. Mrs. Bramson says she'll talk to the man, who is coming over that very day. She meets Danny (Robert Montgomery), who charms her right from the start, working his way into being hired for various duties, away from his work at a nearby hotel.
Now the crux of the story is that police are searching about the area for a missing woman who was staying at that same hotel, thinking she might have been murdered. Olivia seems to suspect Danny at first sight, and shows a dislike for him right from the start.
About a week after Danny moves in, they find the body of the missing woman-minus her head. All the while, Danny seems like the obvious killer, including scenes where he observes, and then tries to break into Mrs. Bramson's safe in her bedroom, where he knows she keeps most of her fortune-she doesn't trust banks.
I kept waiting for her to do some digging to try to find out about this man, but other than foolishly go through his bags with the other two servants, and get caught when Danny comes back unexpectedly, she seems to do nothing to learn about him other than ask him questions, to which all the answers he gives, she doesn't believe at all.
After she becomes quite scared of him, she decides to leave her aunt alone with him, but later returns the same day. A bit later, even more scared, she again goes to stay at her boyfriend's home-under the chaperoning of his mother, leaving Mrs. Bramson all alone in the house with Danny.
Then she comes back, all alone, confronts him, telling him she'll tell the police about him being the murderer-now almost certain that he has killed her aunt. Danny was about to kill her too when the police arrive and arrest him.
The worst scene happened earlier, when the police come to search Danny's items. He brought three containers from the hotel-two suitcases and a large hat box. Olivia and her friends searched the two suitcases, but found the hat box locked. With the police asking Danny for the key, for reasons that made no sense, Olivia rushes into the room and insists it is her hat box and she takes it back almost as soon as possible. The cops didn't even ask her why she would lock up a box full of her letters, as she said were in it. It seems odd to us that if the head was in that hat box, how come after well over a week it didn't emit any sort of odor?
At no time was there ever any indication that anyone else might have had something to do with the murder. The only thing "suspenseful" about this was how many more victims would he have before he was caught. Not being a "Mad Slasher" film of modern day, the count of characters we saw living was only one.
They tried to develop a theme that Olivia wound up being attracted to Danny, excited by the thought that he was a killer and led a more exciting life than she did, but that just didn't make any sense to me. She seemed dumb about him at times, but kept realizing the right way to behave, only she was too late for her aunt.
Maybe I've seen too much Hitchcock, but most of my interest here was waiting, hoping to find a real plot twist, perhaps learning that Danny was a strange man, but not the killer of anyone. But as we kept going, it became more and more clear this wasn't going to happen, leaving me with a rather disappointing last 20 minutes of an otherwise interesting movie. I figure that lowers the score to a 5.