8/10
Clara Kimball Young to the rescue!
18 November 2017
Warning: Spoilers
Wallace Ford (Jimmy Flavin), Barbara Pepper (Marjorie), Joan Woodbury (Gloria Rohloff), Clara Kimball Young (Mrs Jamison), John Elliott (Jamison), Jack Mulhall (Bill, the friendly guest), Ed Cassidy (Mason, the take-charge guest), Earl Dwire (Morgan, the landlord), Vincent Dennis (Bert, the man-of-all-work), John W. Cowell (Hughes), Ivo Henderson (Harrison), Arthur Loft (Wentworth, the leader), Robert McKenzie (marriage license clerk), and "Silver Wolf" (the dog).

Director: BOB HILL. Screenplay: Al Martin. Photography: Bill Hyer. Film editor: Dan Milner. Art director: Fred Preble. Music director: Abe Meyer. Sound recording: Josh Westmoreland. Production manager: Ed W. Rote. Producer: Sam Katzman.

A Mercury Production. Copyright 15 June 1936 by Puritan Pictures Corporation. Filmed at RKO-Pathé Studios. U.S. release through Puritan: 1 March 1936. 7 reels. 67 minutes.

SYNOPSIS: A diverse-group-of-travelers-stranded-in-a-lonely-inn murder mystery.

COMMENT: Another spin-off from "Seven Keyes to Baldpate" and the like, this entry is rather entertaining, thanks to a first-rate cast including the exotic Joan Woodbury, feisty Barbara Pepper, the charismatic John Elliott and silent star Clara Kimball Young (in a sizable role for once. At one stage, she even delivers a speech in front of a photo of her lovely self in her heyday).

Al Martin's swiftly-moving screenplay neatly balances wisecracks and suspense, while director Bob Hill and his cinematographer Bill Hyer have magnificently risen to the occasion of being let loose in the old RKO-Pathé studios among a horde of standing sets. As Turner and Price comment in their standard textbook, Forgotten Horrors: "Unusual in low-budget production is the mobility of the camera-work, in which fluid dolly and lateral tracking shots enhance many scenes."
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