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Wealthy but ruthless businessman Archer Coe (Robert Barrat) is found
dead in his room one morning, holding the gun he has been shot with in his
hand and having his door bolted from the inside ... so everything would
suggest suicide, and the police quickly wants to close the case, too -
whensuper sleuth Philo Vance (William Powell) shows up on the scene,
proves how someone could have gotten out of the room and bolted the room
from the outside, proves that Coe wasn't shot dead at all but
stabbed, and is quick to identify a tailor-made suspect, Coe's brother
Brisbane (Frank Conroy), whom he finds virtually guilty beyond a doubt -
but then Brisbane is found dead as well, killed only a short time after
his brother, stabbed exactly the same way. It's back to square one for
Vance and the police, and there are way too many suspects to choose from,
including Coe's niece/ward Hilda (Mary Astor), her fiancé MacDonald (Paul
Cavanagh), whose prizewinning dog was killed by Coe who wanted to remove
competition at a dog show, Coe's secretary Wrede (Ralph Morgan), who is in
love with Hilda which Coe didn't approve of, Coe's various business
partners and even his neighbour (Helen Vinson) and his Chinese cook (James
Lee). At one point, MacDonald is even attacked by someone using the same
dagger as in the two murders, but then does that remove him from the list
of suspects, or does it make him more suspicious, as there were no
witnesses for the attack? Eventually, Vance is able to reconstruct the
double-murder as such - Archer Coe was killed by two people one after the
other, one was his own brother Brisbane, and Brisbane was then killed by
the other killer who mistook him for Archer -, but even tholugh he is
gradually developing a theory, he has no hard evidence against his prime
suspect. So Vance asks MacDonald for help, and at a time appointed by
Vance himself, MacDonald deliberately picks a fight with Wrede, who loses
his head over the whole matter in a manner that he tries to kill MacDonald
- and only a bloodhound that Vance has borrowed keeps him from doing any
real harm. Of course, justice is served to Wrede in the end.
Ok
murder mystery that is kept alive by a lively performance by William
Powell on top of his form, but suffers a bit from the too-convoluted plot,
the over-emphasis on the locked-room-aspect of the mystery (which is
resolved in a rather disappointing way), and too big a cast to really find
one's way through. Still, ok genre fodder, just nothing more.
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find The Kennel Murder Case at adultvideouniverse.com
