The diligent student is interrupted by the janitor, who is about to shoo him out of the parlor and into the study hall. There, he finds fifteen potential victims, and, as part of his final exam, he’ll need to ascertain the most likely reason each victim will be heedlessly slaughtered before midnight. The time is 11:30pm. Ready? Set! <bang!> Uhh … uhhhhh….
If you value plausibility, even logic, in your murder mysteries, then you may want to give Murder at Midnight (1931) a pass, although I think a really inquisitive mind could make it all seem to work. But this many unsympathetic, in some cases “oh, please kill them, too!” characters, made it hard to take the story seriously. It quickly devolved into the morbid game of How many will be dead at the end of this?, followed by And will they kill off that damn cop who spreads peanut shells everywhere?
Sadly, the answer is No.
However, while it may have been common in the era the movie was made, I’ve never seen a game of Charades in which it actually looked like the players were putting on a little drama. It was charming.
But that’s not nearly enough to save this story from the trashcan of the mundane.
