User Reviews

This B-movie certainly will not be appearing on anyone's "must-see" list, though despite its silly plot and silly acting, there's something rather enjoyable about this cheesy little film. The movie stars a lot of familiar B-actors--William Gargan, Ann Savage and especially Leo Gorcey and George Zucco (the unofficial king of B baddies). There's even an appearance by the toupee-less George E. Stone---all great folks for lovers of these low budget films like myself.

The film begins with the apparent murder of Stone--though he sure seemed resilient and seemed to linger forever! Later, though, when he is 100% DEAD, his body turns up and then disappears. Three reporters (Gargan, Savage and Gorcey) get mixed up in this and the cops suspect they had something to do with the killing. Of course, they didn't and it's pretty obvious that Zucco has something to do with this--mostly because Zucco ALWAYS is the bad guy!! So, it's up to these rather dumb reporters (especially Gorcey, who is practically subhuman) to find out who's responsible, convince the cops they didn't do it AND get the story.

It's all very enjoyable nonsense. As for Gorcey, this is a rare non-Bowery Boys role and you'll either love him here or hate him--he certainly is not a subtle guy. I liked the way he masticated the English language. Oddly, however, despite being a dominant person in the first half of the film, he's barely in the last. Mostly, it's Savage and Gargan who carry this silly bit of enjoyable fluff. I say enjoyable because despite its limitations, it DID entertain and made me laugh--and that's all most B's were really intended to do.

Weak comedy involving murder, criminals and missing corpses, all with a newspaper and a wax museum setting. George Zucco, the British Erich Von Stroheim, is in the first scene shooting an alleged crime figure and for the rest of the movie, he's hunting down the corpse which walked while still alive into the museum and ends up being lost. The comedy comes in the form of reporter Ann Savage and museum worker Leo Gorcey (of the Bowery Boys series) and their efforts to find the corpse and get it to the police so the murder can be solved. It's all pretty confusing and silly and ultimately it really makes absolutely no sense.

For a movie made from the Pine Thomas division of Paramount studios, this proves after "One Body Too Many" and "Scared Stuff" that comedy was not their forte. They did mostly war movies, so it seems out of their element. Savage better the same year when she starred in the film noir "Detour". Zucco comes off unscathed as the villain. Leo Gorcey is, while playing Slip Mahoney, although with a different character name. It's adequate for an hour long time filler with a few amusing lines, but the plot is absurd behind belief.

When a man called Jelke, aging and with wild eyes, turns a resident of the fleabag Empress Hotel into a corpse, he causes a major problem. The resident was Joe Wells, the biggest noise in the rackets who had a five grand reward on his head. And the biggest problem is that Joe Wells has been dead for quite a while. The second biggest is that the corpse keeps moving around, especially within the dark, creepy Last Gangster Wax Museum. It's hard to tell who is a waxy, dead-eyed manikin and who is a waxy, dead-eyed Joe Wells. But before long two smart-mouthed, competing reporters who used to be an item are going to get the truth.

It only takes 63 minutes for this low-budget B programmer to race through the plot, find a killer, discover the mystery of the mobile body, uncover just why Joe Wells was so mobile, and bring two competing wiseacres to the realization that some forms of cooperation can be pleasurable.

Except for the actors, that's all there is to this brief and dull excursion into low budget comedy mystery. If you're old enough, some of the names, or at least the faces, might bring a smile of recognition. Leo Gorcey plays Clutch, a language-mangling fixer-upper who works in the museum. George E. Stone plays the corpse. Don Beddoe is a detective and Charles Halton is the tired, tired, tired owner of the museum. Halton specialized in roles where looking like a small, aging accountant was a plus. Just to remind us that most B movie actors were capable of something more, watch Gorcey in Dead End (1939), Beddoe in The Narrow Margin (1951) and Stone in Some Like It Hot (1959) or any of the Boston Blackie movies.

Most especially if you're fond of nostalgia are the three leads whose careers were almost exclusively confined to tons of programmers. There's George Zucco as Jelke. Zucco was a fine actor in some good movies in the Thirties, but who, as he aged, settled for steady work in B movies. Occasionally he scored something that could use his talent. Just watch him as a cop in Lured (1947), mysterious and threatening and then a very nice guy, or in The Pirate (1948), perfectly at home in an outlandish costume as the Viceroy. William Gargan is one of my favorites. He almost always played tough, good-natured, energetic guys who always had an angle and a comeback. He plays reporter Pete Willis, a guy who always has an angle and a comeback. And, of course, there's Bernice Lyon as Sue Gallagher, the reporter who lives above the wax museum and who finds the body on the stairway to her apartment. She made 21 movies between 1943 (her first) and 1945 when she made the cheese B classic that put her in the books. She'd be long forgotten except for her memorable film name -- Ann Savage -- and the movie Detour (1945). So I guess Midnight Manhunt qualifies as at least a kinda- noir out of respect for Ann Savage and her over-the-top portrayal of that classic femme fatale named Vera, a woman with sharp nails.

Funny how you don't have wax museum pictures anymore. They seemed to be a staple product back in the day, with pictures like 1933's "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and 1940's "Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum". One might consider 2005's "House of Wax", but that doesn't count because Paris Hilton was in it. "Midnight Manhunt" doesn't have 'wax' in the title, but it gets some mileage out of the theme with the presence of The Last Gangster Wax Museum. I had to scratch my head over that actually, as I couldn't figure out what the reference was supposed to represent. Probably not important.

At the center of the story is a corpse, compliments of George Zucco, who murders a fellow criminal to procure a quarter million dollars worth of stolen diamonds. He could have left well enough alone, but for some reason decided he needed to get rid of the body. (It's explained later on for anyone willing to buy it, but I don't have that kind of dough.) This could have been your standard Forties crime programmer, but the presence of Leo Gorcey added an offbeat comic element to it. Gorcey uses a line about having 'optical delusions' that I'm sure I heard in one of his Bowery Boys flicks, but he outdoes himself with this one - "You are now gazin' on the nucleus of a neurotic". Seems he was mixing up his movie genres.

The picture's real focus though is on reporter Sue Gallagher (Ann Savage) and her on and off romantic rival Pete Willis (William Gargan). Gallagher discovers the body of mobster Joe Wells on the museum staircase, and figures to cash in on a scoop and a five thousand dollar payoff for proving Wells' whereabouts, dead or alive. It was curious to me how Zucco's character Jelke followed a trail of blood spots from Wells' apartment to the wax museum and the hot shot police force couldn't have done the same. Zucco seemed just a bit too refined to get involved with murder and mayhem here, but all that changed when he used the butt of his gun to knock out Miss Gallagher. I had to replay that scene twice, thinking I had witnessed an optical delusion.

This is a comedy who-done-it set in and around "The Last Gangster" wax museum. George Zucco plays Jelke, who kills Joe Wells (George E. Stone)who dies on the steps of the wax museum. Gallagher (Ann Savage)finds the body and sets it up as one of the exhibits.

The killer returns and it is a race to see if they can get the body to the police before the murderer strikes again.

The really interesting thing about this film is every part is played by people known by all. You can have fun guessing where you have seen them before.

George E. Stone - looking a lot older than I remember him was always memorable in "42nd Street", "Little Ceasar" and "Cimarron".

Ann Savage, who had such a different role in "Detour" plays Gallagher, a snappy reporter.

Leo Gorcey seemed to make quite a few movies away from the Bowery Boys - he plays the young, wise-cracking museum assistant.

George Zucco was always the dour scientist or professor in lots of these B or C films.

William Gargan, who was a familiar face in the 1930s played Gallagher's boyfriend, Pete Willis.

Ben Weldon, who always looked the same - he mostly played thugs and hoodlums in films like "Marked Woman" turns up for one scene as a hotel manager.

Paul Hurst was in it as well - playing a policeman. He always seemed to play baddies, especially in westerns. He has over 300 movies listed on IMDb.

You would think that the concepts comedy and crime thriller are complete opposites; they should be, which is probably why this sub-genre can work well. The trick is finding the right mix of these elements. Sometimes the characters are too goofy, and not funny; in some of the British old dark house stuff from this era the humor adds to the plot.

Let's see. George Zucco is a creepy gangster Jelke, who starts things off by plugging Joe Wells (George E. Stone). Weirdly, reporter Sue (Anne Savage) props him up in a wax museum (most of the scenes take place in this museum/hotel/police outpost building) run by Miggs (Charles Halton) and 'Clutch' Tracy (Leo Gorcy). Sue's fellow reporter/love interest Pete (William Gargan) is alerted about the killing by Clutch, but doesn't know where the body is. Miggs discovers the corpse, but Clutch convinces him not to call the police.

Already I don't get the reason for secrecy. There's a dead-or-alive reward for Well's corpse. Why wouldn't either Sue or Miggs alert the police and collect the reward? Jelke is the only one who has a motive for hiding or doing away with the corpse. Anyway, Jelke forces Sue to reveal the its whereabouts. But Miggs/Clutch have stashed it elsewhere already. The police (Don Beddoe as Lt. Hurley) shows up at Well's room, finding Pete there, but nothing else of interest.

Jelke checks out the museum, with the police and Pete right behind him. Pete tells Jelke that he knows where the body is (Hurley doesn't show until Jelke leaves). Fortunately, at Sue's, Clutch shows up and tells Pete he's got the body on a freight car. Sue is taken to jail (as is Miggs) for her involvement, but Jelke bails her and forces her to accompany him to the corpse.

With everyone converging on the freight car, Clutch and Pete manage to dodge them all, and drag the corpse away. Jelke sort of gratuitously lets on that he's recovered diamonds from the corpse. They go to retrieve the body from a taxi. Jelke attempts to ambush Pete and Sue, but they turn the tables. Cunningly, it was really Clutch huddled in the taxi, pretending to be Wells. That way even if things backfired, Sue came Pete would still have the body...somewhere.

This was better than I thought it would be. Gorcy snags most of the humor--and such misbegotten witticisms he comes up with! Describing Wells reputation, he says "He (Wells) had so many notches in his tommygun it looked like a buzzsaw": to the officer who maybe doesn't see so well "I'd advise you to see an optimist"; to Sue and Pete: "did the milk of romance finally...curdle?" Then there's subtler stuff for the other characters. Miggs constantly complains about how tired he is; the lieutenant gets so wound up when the body keeps disappearing that he finally just screams--since we anticipate this scene it's all the more effective. There's plenty of other little touches like this.

On the other hand, Jelke is deadly serious the whole time. All of his scenes have a looming noirish quality that disturb the more nonchalant, idiosyncratic attitude of everyone else. Zucco and Gorcy definitely bring this up a few notches. the only significant problem I have with the plot is the aforementioned reward; it would've been better if no one knew about that until near the end. If Well's diamonds are known to others besides Jelke, then they become a decent reason to to take the body. Once the diamonds were found though, the body would still only be of interest to Jelke.

Midnight Manhunt does a lot with a simple, if gimmicky device, mostly with pretty good suspense and surprisingly apt use of humor. 7/10.

A comedy with Ann Savage, W. Gargan, L. Gorcey, Don Beddoe, Zucco—a heterogeneous cast, small but choice, with each's style played freely, the director's input being to allow each to play ad _libitum, yet this was the twilight of a style, as in the hyperbole of the wax museum, by which the movie symbolizes jokingly its own nature, a show about the events of an evening in the life of a museum owner and his employee, two reporters, several cops and two gangsters, these last added symbolically to the museum (yet another age is also heralded in this comedy about gangsters and reporters), the structure of an ordinary but effective comedy, its main strength the speed; the policeman is clueless, but the gangster seems tough enough, and the reporter relies on his friend's having a gun. The owner of the joint could of shown a behavior a bit more dignified. Zucco is threatening and austere, good at what he does, and genuinely creepy, as others call him; Beddoe tries to manage a zany situation, but isn't ridiculous. Each of these: Gorcey, Beddoe, Zucco, even Gargan (as his leads are also typecast), were character actors. The actress' role serves well her undisputed talent. Her character is the only one who hasn't been summoned, tipped, like her rival or the copper, but steps into a scoop. The finding of a corpse, a gangster's corpse, is naturally kindred to the wax museum. The professional competitors, reporters and copper, didn't track a gangster, but his corpse. He lived in a hotel next to the museum, but none, save for his killers, recognized him alive.

Also, there's no over the top silliness, from the two really humorous characters, the owner and his employee, only the 1st displays a silly scare, and even this is understandable, and it's not given much time.

Some characters are changed by this evening: the employee gets the chance to play in a real gangster action (though he lately falls asleep, missing his main scene), the reporters' careers are boosted, a gangster is liquidated and his killer is caught; intrepidity is rewarded (the reporters), zaniness, to some degree (L. Gorcey in a justly praised role, the kid as grownup), _cluelessness (the copper, Beddoe, who as a matter of fact didn't get a fair chance to be more useful) and apathy (the joint's owner), not. Watchable for its cast, watchable for the comedy.

It's been a while since I've rated a movie so low, and I hope it will be an even longer while before it happens again. There is cheap, and then there is "Midnight Manhunt"; this picture looks like it was thrown together in three days, in three sets, with three thousand dollars. As rival reporters looking for a missing body, William Gargan and Ann Savage will not exactly make you forget Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. And there are so many unfunny supporting characters gumming up the proceedings that even George Zucco, who plays it straight as the villain, cannot save the film. See a Torchy Blane movie instead. Any Torchy Blane movie. * out of 4.

You know you're in for a breezy lightweight comedy during the opening credits of "Midnight Manhunt." The illustrations depict happy, upbeat cartoon characters, while the Alexander Laszlo score sounds bright and chipper. An infamous gangster who has been missing for five years perishes at the hands of a murderous thief. Nevertheless, the gangster manages to survive long enough to leave his hotel and die in an adjacent wax museum. A variety of characters find and lose the body throughout the action in his modest forerunner of the "Weekend at Bernie's" movies or Alfred Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry." The saving grace of this mystery-thriller is director W.C. Thomas' nimble pacing. The believable cast adds some humanity to this predictable potboiler. Nobody here found greater fame in Hollywood. George Zucco is sufficiently sinister as a pistol-packing hoodlum, while Leo Gorcey mangles the English language with such abandon that he could be Mrs. Malaprop's son. Here's an example of Gorcey's dialogue: "Do you not never read no newspapers?" When a cop believes that he has seen a dead gangster, Gorcey cracks, "He's suffering from optical delusions." Detective Lieutenant Hurley sums everything up succinctly, "Maybe I'm crazy. I've never been on a case like this before: trying to find a corpse that somebody stole." Afterward, he adds: "Who in the blazes would want a corpse in the first place?" Basically, the David Lang screenplay boils down to somebody meets corpse, somebody loses corpse, and eventually somebody gets corpse back again. This is the kind of serviceable nonsense that insomniacs would find tolerable.