It's occasionally amusing -- a story about seven people in a "haunted house" on a stormy night. One by one, four of them disappear, evidently one of them murdered.
There's a lot of shouting and carrying on. One of the characters -- the secretary of a Broadway producer -- is gay, and I'm glad because he gets most of the funny lines and bits of business. I suppose some people today would argue that the character's flamboyance is politically incorrect but I'm sure that if this were shown in the Castro Theater it would get belly laughs and applause.
The plot is hardly worth going on about. I always enjoy the notion of a handful of people stuck in a country mansion during a fierce electrical storm but the writers have to DO something with the proposition. After all, it's not funny in itself. Neil Simon did an exceptional job with it in "Murder By Death," using some of the same hoary tactics. (Two living eyes stare out of a painting.) All of the acting is overdone. The lines are loud and the gestures theatrical, but the viewer will have to go easy on such weaknesses. It's 1934, and many of the actors of the period came from the stage. They had to shout to reach the balcony. On top of that, the huge, noisy cameras had to be enclosed in soundproof "blimps", as they were called, and the microphones hidden in vases, buttonholes, garter belts, and whatnot.
It's worth a look, perhaps, but not two looks.
There's a lot of shouting and carrying on. One of the characters -- the secretary of a Broadway producer -- is gay, and I'm glad because he gets most of the funny lines and bits of business. I suppose some people today would argue that the character's flamboyance is politically incorrect but I'm sure that if this were shown in the Castro Theater it would get belly laughs and applause.
The plot is hardly worth going on about. I always enjoy the notion of a handful of people stuck in a country mansion during a fierce electrical storm but the writers have to DO something with the proposition. After all, it's not funny in itself. Neil Simon did an exceptional job with it in "Murder By Death," using some of the same hoary tactics. (Two living eyes stare out of a painting.) All of the acting is overdone. The lines are loud and the gestures theatrical, but the viewer will have to go easy on such weaknesses. It's 1934, and many of the actors of the period came from the stage. They had to shout to reach the balcony. On top of that, the huge, noisy cameras had to be enclosed in soundproof "blimps", as they were called, and the microphones hidden in vases, buttonholes, garter belts, and whatnot.
It's worth a look, perhaps, but not two looks.