The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

Well Deserved Praise

Truly Dreadful Film

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

. . . or actress Myrna Loy, THE KENNEL MURDER CASE could be better titled as THE BROKEN VASE CASE. Though this picture does begin at a dog show, the kennel is an afterthought by the time corpses start cropping up. William Powell's character, amateur detective Philo Vance, is more asexual here than Sherlock Holmes--a total cypher, as far as romantic interests are concerned. What love connections there are in THE KENNEL MURDER CASE generally fall flat; the doggy romances in THE LADY AND THE TRAMP are much more convincing than anything here. The plot of THE KENNEL MURDER CASE is constructed along the lines of an Agatha Christie mystery, complete with an amateur detective (Vance) staging a "big reveal" in a drawing room climax. THE KENNEL MURDER CASE is a great bedtime movie; if you fall asleep before it ends, you can't really miss very much.

The Kennel Murder Case (1933)A precursor to the Thin Man series, starring William Powell as a detective (but without the very supplementary Myrna Loy). And this is directed by none other than Michael Curtiz ("Casablanca" and "Mildred Pierce"), and you can often tell, scenes characteristically complex with lots of people and foreground/background. As a whole the movie races along, to the point that the huge cast (all introduced with visual vignettes at the start) is confusing. But hang in there. because a third of the way through Powell kicks in full time.There are few actors like William Powell in the history of American film. He is peculiar in charming ways, and makes no bones about it. He lacks any sense of what we might think of as cool or hardness--there's no Bogart in him, no Cary Grant of course, nothing but what a character actor might have. And he made it a virtue, visible even here. The rest of the cast is good or very good, with a few other recognizable faces, and it gels increasingly as you go until a series of dramatic whodunnit style conclusions wraps it all up.Powell's detective, Philo Vance, was a snobby socialite, and the plots have a quality of private detective vs. police (which gets used in a lot of these kinds of series, of course). There are four movies with Powell playing the part (and many others with other actors in the role. This is the fourth, and best of them, the first going back to the dawn of sound, 1929. It's not as slick or warm (or sophisticated) as "The Thin Man" series, which is a high water mark of the effete detective, but it's terrific in its own way, and really well constructed. I'd not miss it.

***SPOILERS*** Overly plotted, down to the very last pottery fragment, murder mystery that has the great detective Philo Vance, William Powell,completely befuddled until the last five or so minutes in the film. It's then that Philo puts all the pieces together and ends up getting his man with the help of a very determined Doberman Pincher.The murder victim Chinese antique collector Archer Coe, Robert Barrat, was at first made to look like he in fact killed himself by blowing his brains out with his own, registered in his name, handgun. It's when coroner Dr. Doremous, Etienne Girardot, examined Coe's corpse that he realized that he was in fact already dead before he-a total impossibility-shot himself! The only possible suspect in Coe's murder is his brother, who has no use for him at all, Brisbane, Frank Conroy, who has an air-tight alibi in him being on a train to Chicago at the time of Coe's murder. That soon falls apart when Brisbane himself is found dead-murdered-in a closet in Coe's mansion.Philo has his work out out for him in the fact that he's greatly hampered by almost everyone involved with the late Archer Coe wanting to murder him if, and that's a big "If", only they had the chance! The chance did come when one of Coe's many many enemies found him alone in his mansion but, being the armature that he is, screwed it all up! Not only did he bumble Coe's murder he ended up murdering Coe's brother Brisbane-whom he mistook for Coe- who was the person, by not realizing that he was already dead, who put the bullet in Coe's brain! To make the already confusing movie even more confusing we also have Coe's Chinese cook Liang, James Lee, threaten Coe, when he was still alive, for him selling off his collection of expensive Chinese porcelain's that he, Liang, illegally bought for him on the black market.Of all the reasons to murder Coe the most obvious was overlooked by Philo, as well as the police, because they convinced themselves that his killer, in how he accidentally stymied them, had to have the brains of a master criminal to do it! It was in the end that Philo finally came to the conclusion to who murdered Archer Coe but only by getting all the suspects, as much as a half dozen of them, in Coe's murder in the same room and then have a police dog-a Doberman Pincher-sniff him out!

Enjoyed viewing this film on TCM and watching a very young William Powell, (Philo Vance) playing detective just like he did with Myrna Loy in the "Thin Man Series". Back in the 1930's William Powell played in the Philo Vance Series and in this picture, the famous veteran actress Mary Astor, (Hilda Lake) becomes one of the suspects in a murder/suicide case where a man named, Archer Coe, (Robert Barrot) is found dead and Archer was in a room that was bolted from the inside. Ralph Morgan, (Raymond Wrede/Archer's Secretary) gave a great supporting role and was the brother to Frank Morgan who appeared "In the Wizard of Oz" 1939. Eugene Palette, (Detective Sgt. Heath) appeared in quite a few of these Philo Vance films and also gave a great performance in "Robin Hood" with Errol Flynn. Always remember, the least likely actor could very well be the killer. Enjoy a great Classic from the past.