The Longest Night (1936)

Just perfect...

Great Film overall

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Blistering performances.

As I watched this film I thought that "The Longest Night" was an incredibly short film, and indeed, it is apparently the shortest feature film MGM ever made. Nevertheless, it is an entertaining little murder mystery that's well worth a watch of under one hour.There is a problem here, however. The director and writers tried to make a film that was both a mystery AND a comedy. There are elements of both here, but it's a mix that doesn't quite work. They might better have made a mystery OR a comedy. There are fine comedy bits here, as well as fine dramatic moments, but they don't mesh.The performances, however, are quite good. Robert Young may be the only person in the film you readily know, and he is quite good here. And although you won't probably know many of the other actors is this B film, you'll recognize many of them. Two are worth mentioning, albeit in a negative sense. Did either Ted Healy (earlier associated with The Three Stooges") or Sidney Toler (of Charlie Chan fame) actually have any acting ability????? I guess this sounds like a negative review, although I don't mean it to be. This was an entertaining film...and a little different...and worth watching with a t.v. tray and dinner in front of the television. But just once.

Longest Night, The (1936) *** (out of 4) Surprisenly effective mystery from MGM runs just 50-minutes but there are plenty of smiles and drama along the way. A department store owner (Robert Young) shows up at the store to do some business when one of his workers is found strangled to death. The cops are called in and they demand that everyone there remain in the store until they can find the killer who in return keeps killing more people. THE LONGEST NIGHT is the shortest film I can think of that MGM made around this time but no matter what the length is, the film remains an entertaining little gem thanks in large part to some nice characters and performances. Even by 1936 this type of mystery film had ran its course but it's easy to see why studios made them since they could do them cheap and it probably wasn't too hard to turn a profit. The actual story here, outside taking place in a department store, really doesn't offer anything new or original as we get the typical story of a wide range of characters being thrown together and one of them is the killer. The nice thing here is that it's never obvious who is doing the killings or why and I really enjoyed how the film slowly gave out clues and pieces to what's actually going on. Another major plus is that the cast members are so entertaining that you can't help but have fun with them. Young is as charming as always and he has some nice chemistry with Florence Rice who plays one of the worker's whose sister might be involved in the crime. Ted Healy and Sidney Toler are both in fine form here so fans of theirs will enjoy seeing them here. Julie Haydon, Leslie Fenton and Samuel S. Hinds. At just 50-minutes there's really not too much time for a lot of plot but I think that's a good thing because the film is extremely fast-paced and this help builds up some nice drama at the end. There's also not any boring dialogue to slow things down so this is a good example of the running time fitting the story and had they forced ten or twenty more minutes worth of footage it's doubtful the film would have been as entertaining.

"The Longest Night" is a great and entertaining motion picture. Set in a department store, the participants include two sisters, the young owner of the store, annoying little brats, a kleptomaniac, a murderer and assorted cops. The movie had suspense, thrills, romance and laughs. What more could you ask for? Its short length meant a sad lack of screen time for the lovely Robert Young. But, as the saying goes, always leave them wanting more!!

I have to say that I really enjoyed this film. I generally don't go for old movies, especially those in black and white, but this one really caught my attention. I found this film entertaining even though it seemed like some issues were left unresolved, but all in all it was definitely worth watching. It also ended the way I wanted it to, which is a plus!