Midnight Phantom (1935)

★★★ · Gee! · Spuzz · 2006-05-02

This bizarrely paced thriller gets it all wrong for some odd reason. Instead of killing off the person who needs to be killed (and we find out early that that person is going to be killed, the way he sets himself and the characters up) and then creating a mystery leading to the solving of the case, the film introduces us to characters, sets up ridiculous some ridiculous family dramas, and THEN gets around to the murder in the final 15 minutes or so, and goes on to solve it in that time! As usual, itÃÂÃÂs the guy you least expect that does the deed, but I had my suspicions from the start!…

★★★ · Corn · terracesider · 2006-05-09

This is a strange one. Characters are introduced, possible plot lines established and then it all telescopes into 15 minutes of corny who-dun-it. Yet somehow the end product is an enjoyable way to pass an hour.

★ · Plenty of Talking · ridetheory · 2004-04-21

With a title like this, you might expect the film to have an exciting pulp fiction character in it, possibly a criminal mastermind in a mask, but you would be wrong. What you get instead is a lot of talk, most of it in a police chief's office. Plenty of people have a motive to murder him, and after a whole lot of chin music, one finally does, choosing a pretty ridiculous murder method -- poison darts (just like the pygmies use, we're told). Nice cliche scene: newspaper presses run, bundled papers come out, paperboys pick them up and the headline appears. There's an action sequence at the…