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The Greenes are a family kept together by fate, or should we say greed, rather than anything else, as old man Greene has forced them to live together in his house for 15 years following his death, to inherit his fortune, and should any of the family leave or die, his or her share will be distributed among the others. And then one night, Chester Greene (Lowell Drew) actually is shot dead in his room, and Ada (Jean Arthur) non-fatally shot in the back only a few minutes later. Police seargant Heath (Eugene Pallette) is quick to suspect a robbery, but Philo Vance (William Powell), an amateur on the case with district attorney Markham's (E.H. Calvert) permission is quick to disagree, and thus everybody present in the household is questioned, from paralyzed and bed-ridden matriarch Mrs. Greene (Lowell Drew) to siblings Sibella (Florence Eldridge), Rex (Morgan Farley) and Ada, to butler (Brandon Hurst), cook (Augusta Burmeister) and maid (Marcia Harris), and of course family doctor Von Blon (Ullrich Haupt), but little is found out, safe that Sibella has a morbid sense of humour, Rex owns a revolver like that one used in the two assaults but claims to have lost it, and Dr. Von Blon's relationship with Sibella might exceed the usual doctor-patient relationship - all clues that just don't lead anywhere - until Ada pays a visit to the district attorney's office, calls Rex from there to fetch something for her, and while she's on the phone he's shot dead. Yet later, Von Blon reports some poisons from his medicine bag have gone missing while in the Greene household, and sure enough, Ada soon survives being poisoned only by a hair while the old Mrs. Greene isn't that lucky. Vance eventually finds all he's looking for in the family library and eventually fingers the least suspicious of all, Ada, to be the killer, who has used contraptions to shoot both herself in the back and Rex, has factored her rescue into her poisoning herself, plus her father (she's only an adopted Greene) was criminally insane. When all this is found out she's already busy pushing Sibella from the roof of the family home, but ultimately Sibella is saved and Ada falls to her own death.

Of course some shortcuts had to be made given the film's running time of less than 70 minutes, but overall, this is a pretty faithful adaptation of S.S. Van Dine's source novel from only the previous year - and that's not just a good thing, as the book is a pretty mediocre murder mystery at best that in its desperate attempt to make the least suspicious person its muderer has turned into something a bit too mechanical, or in other words rather stale. It works well for the then blossoming early talking pictures though, as it only requires a handful of locations, next to no exteriors, and is all talks and little action - which unfortunately translates into the film that comes across as stagey (as many early talkies do, to be quite honest) and lacks any real dynamics beyond the purely functional. Not even William Powell's natural charm can save this from being ... essentially a bit of a bore.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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