IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour flat, rated 5.4 by 354 insomniacs.
Genre: Old Dark House
Verdict: Mysteries aplenty.
On her twenty-first birthday Marie goes to the one-time family home, which has been empty for thirteen years and became an Old Dark House with sliding panels, secret passages, sub-basements, priest holes, and other conveniences. Evidently none of these things were in the house when she lived there because she knows nothing….about them.
Thirteen years earlier her grandfather had a family dinner and denounced his relatives as useless, greedy sods, all but little, innocent Marie. Her two child brothers are also included in the denunciation, it would seem. An empty chair at the table represented the thirteenth guest, and Gramps said he would explain that later. We are still waiting Gramps! We have waited more than six years! It is never explained.
Gramps entrusted an envelope for Marie with the attending family attorney, whom he also accused of greed. Is that smart Gramps? First accuse him and then hand over the goods? Gramps also assumed Marie is going to remain innocent until age twenty-one. Gramps did not get out much.
Years later on the appointed day the lawyer gives her the envelope and she has to take it to the ODH and open it there. Why is anyone’s guess. The screenwriter kept that to himself. In it is the message 13-13-13. Gramps is inscrutable. Is that a cube root in the making? Yes it is thirteen years later and that has something to do with the thirteenth guest. Huh?
At the abandoned house Marie discovers the electricity is connected and so is the telephone. Everyone else rediscovers this without ever considering the implications. ‘Zap!’ being the major one.
Thereafter the murders begin. We never do find out the identity of the first and last victims. Huh?
The murderer also posed the murdered victims at the table. Why? Who knows. Maybe he was trying to find number thirteen.
Spoiler alert. Turns out the greedy lawyer is the murderer. Hmm, and he is not a very bright murderer. He wanted the envelope which he had in safekeeping for thirteen years. Why not take a peek? Guess it did not occur to the screenwriter. That would have been easier than all the rigmarole at the ODH. That must have been covered in law school. Did he sleep through every class?
Moreover, we discover the numbers 13-13-13 are a safety deposit box that holds a will that leaves everything to Marie. Any shyster lawyer could surely have streamed open the envelope, and just as easily as Marie was to do, figure out it was a safe deposit box, and finagle opening it. That certainly is covered in the law school curricula, for why else go to law school? By the way, how did she make the leap from 13-13-13 to a safety deposit box? We’ll never know.
In a classic ploy the villain hired a private dick to guard Marie, and tell him what she is doing. That dick is Dick Purcell who has a script from a different movie. He makes jokes and laughs as the bodies fall. He laughs a lot at his own jokes. This rugged he-man died with a year of a massive heart attack.
Even more annoying is Frank Faylen as a dumb cop, so favoured in movies of the era, but at least this comic distress is not a black man or a woman. The other dumb cop has no excuses since he was one of the authors of the screenplay.
Given the screenplay, the direction by journeyman William Beaudine is crisp and well paced. The gaffes and gaps are in the text, not the direction or the editing.
When the film was released the U.S. Marine Corps had engaged the Japanese on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, and this indecisive but bloody battle would contain to the end of the war. Naval engagements off Bougainville were likewise indecisive but murderous. Meanwhile in Europe, Blond Germans were busy murdering Jews, Gypsies, Masons, homosexuals, and red heads.
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