Review of Murder in Harlem

Do NOT assume from my score of 1 that this is a terrible movie. What I saw of it wasn't too bad for a Black-produced film of the 1930s. The problem, however, is that it was released by Alpha Video--possibly the worst producers of DVDs you can find!! Like so many of their other releases, this film is a horrible print and desperately needs to be restored--and Alpha, as usual, has done NOTHING to clean up the print and piece it back together properly. It was really frustrating when again and again, scenes would "chop"--with chunks missing and the scene abruptly changing. I know the original film couldn't have looked like that!! And yet, this happens throughout the film and makes viewing and enjoying it next to impossible. I sure hope that some other video company releases the film after some restoration work--it was interesting and I really wanted to finish it, but couldn't because the print was THAT bad.

By the way, HARLEM RIDES THE RANGE is also on the same DVD. While its print is very fuzzy, it is watchable and doesn't have chunks missing like in MURDER IN HARLEM. It's one of five Black Westerns starring Herb Jeffries in an attempt to create an African-American version of Gene Autry for Black-owned theaters. It's not an especially good film, but very important historically and worth a peek.

Also, some time back MURDER IN HARLEM was on DVD from Westlake Entertainment and I assume their copy must be better. Sadly, Westlake is no longer selling the DVD according to Amazon.