Ya know, lady, later someone talks about a “vibrator”. Would that be your vibrator, or the gentleman’s?
Proving multi-tasking has never been a skill of mankind, Michael Shayne spends so much time trying to finance his impending wedding and subsequent marriage that he loses the girl in Dressed To Kill (1941), the third installment of the Michael Shayne, Private Detective, series. The strength of this installment may also be seen as the bandages that cover its weakness: some fairly clever dialog obscures the fact that we never really get to know these characters, not even Shayne, a private detective who, from what his beau has to say, has never really cracked a murder case before, despite multiple tries.
But he has empty pockets and a bride-to-be when, responding to screams in the Hotel du Nord, he discovers a maid shrieking at the sight of a body of a woman, sporting a neat hole between the eyes, and a man, the head of a dog on his head, also shot in the head, sitting at an elegantly laid dinner table. These are a former theatrical producer and one of his leading ladies, and Shayne employs sharp patter, a certain jocular attitude towards the dead, evidence he purloins from the murder scene, and some street smarts as he wades through misdirection, lies, more bodies, a fairly clever murder device, and some clumsy cops.
But no real backstory, no insight. This is a straight B-class movie, I think, and it’s purely about the entertainment value. And it does deliver. Shayne is a pleasant and clever character, and yet in the end even he says “Well, color me pink….”
It’s fun. But if you never see it, you won’t have missed any profound insights.
