That is: for all three of these films, not only is their story heavily shaped by somebody's last will and testament, but a character within the film concocts a scheme -- a plot, if you will (and who cares if you won't) -- that interferes with another character's inheritance.
Grade: D
Well, Green Eyes tries, there's no denying that. After suffering through a passel of "old dark house" mysteries that seem to be making things up as they go along, it's nice to see one that steers with a surer hand.
No doubt it helps to base your movie on a novel -- in this case The Murder of Steven Kester, by one H. Ashbrook -- since the author's already put in the proverbial hard yards to ensure everything makes sense, and every Chekhovian gun gets fired.
Still, Green Eyes drags. Its talky tale of a miserly old man murdered at his own costume party may not be as predictable as some, but still failed to really engage us. The performances are largely rote, the direction is workmanlike, and the mystery itself is ultimately the sort where you shrug and say "OK, sure, whatever" rather than feeling like you've witnessed a satisfying resolution of inevitabilities.
And then there's this guy:
In our entry for A Shot in the Dark we noted our amusement at how much Charles Starrett looks like John de Lancie, aka Q on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But we didn't expect that we'd subsequently see him in a role where he acts like Q. Sure, he's billed as "mystery writer Bill Tracy", but what about the funny anachronistic costume -- a Q penchant?
Or his habit of popping up randomly, à la creepy Watson, to offer advice to the real detectives?
Or his insufferably cocksure, almost omniscient demeanor -- as though he were a fly on every wall and already knew everything about the case?
No, friends, what we have here is an early non-canon appearance of Picard's most irritating adversary (and least-wanted ally), doing research in 1934 to better prepare for 2364. One assumes that the other actors knew something was amiss with their costar but -- since crossing de Lancie can easily put you in a pickle -- it's probably best that no one called him out on his time-traveling escapades.
Grade: D+
Wait, a movie about newlyweds trying to spend their honeymoon at home, before a zany cast of characters barges in to their chagrin? Didn't we just see this one -- twice?
But Son of Ingagi goes in a wholly different direction, and to the film's credit we really weren't sure what was coming until about halfway through. We might have expected the crucial plot twist had we seen Ingagi, a 1930 film that doesn't seem to be available anywhere, though multiple copies survive. Then again, maybe not, since Son appears to be an unauthorized, in-name-only sequel.
(By the way, the scarcity of Ingagi may not be unrelated to the producers' appropriation of someone else's ethnographic footage -- for which they were promptly sued and lost big: oops.)
In any event, this "race film" (as they were once called) is a somewhat threadbare effort, but clearly a notch or two better than, say, The Devil's Daughter, and umpteen notches above the likes of Midnight Shadow. It doesn't compare unfavorably with a lot of what came out of Poverty Row around the same time.
It's also difficult to talk much about Son of Ingagi without spoiling the aforementioned surprise, not that it's anything all that earth-shaking. (But it involves a sandwich, a gong, and a cut finger.)
Among the cast members of Son of Ingagi, let's single two out for special discussion -- both women, as it happens. (Hey, now that we think of it, Son of Ingagi passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.)
First is Laura Bowman as Dr. Helen Jackson, portraying that rarest of cinematic birds: a black female scientist. Who knows if Son of Ingagi was the very first film to have such a character, but surely it has to be among the earliest. Dr. Jackson apparently makes a brilliant discovery in the course of the film; pity the script never bothers to tell us exactly what it is.
Second, we have Daisy Bufford as the bride, Eleanor Lindsay. Her facial muscles must have gotten a workout during this one, as we haven't seen this much smiling since Monster from a Prehistoric Planet. She smiles when things are very good, when things are very bad, and everywhere in between. She even smiles to herself when she's all alone, à la Rose Nylund.
It wouldn't surprise us at all if Son of Ingagi is a far better film than its namesake (using that word in its less-common, contronymic sense). Whatever its shortcomings, at least it's not unpleasant to watch, and the bit with the sandwich was vaguely amusing in a sub-Chaplin-esque way.
The Thirteenth Guest (1932)
Grade: D+
It's hard to look at Ginger Rogers the same way once you've seen her "We're in the Money" opener from The Gold Diggers of 1933, wherein she praises the merits of liquid assets by staring at the camera and unleashing a torrent of Pig Latin. Somewhere between Sinéad and Samwell, I think, is our basic response here -- by which we mean the uncomfortable feeling of having a kind of unwanted, insincere, perverse intimacy thrust upon us, via a performer's insistent gaze. 'Swonderful, to quote another "stare"? No, 'screepy.
Anyway, it took us by surprise when she got killed off about five minutes into The Thirteenth Guest. She may look alive, but it's death by electrocution, you see:
One ought to be clever about such things, though, and while our guess wasn't quite correct, we had the right idea. Like Teller, and maybe Penn, 'tis hard to fool us.
In any event, had we been fated not to see Ginger's face again in what remained of The Thirteenth Guest, we certainly had some other familiar faces to enjoy, like Lyle "Not Two Goldfish" Talbot and the guy who played Smokey in that railroad flick we liked.
As crime solver Phil Winston, Talbot draws from much the same well of arrogance as Charles Starrett's peripatetic mystery writer. But as he's speaking ex cathedra, his pronouncements are backed up by the boys in actual blue -- though, in trying to unravel the webs of intrigue that surround a deeply dysfunctional family, he occasionally demonstrates a decided lack of papal infallibility.
Another face we thought familiar was that of Frances Rich, who plays the breezily amoral Marjorie. We could've sworn she was the nurse in Buried Alive, but nope -- that was Beverly Roberts, whom Rich resembles in appearance and, especially, voice.
In fact Rich's career spanned only six movies before she packed it in and became a sculptor, living to the ripe old age of 97. No word on whether she was responsible for the Lard Lad, but voice aside, she clearly didn't eat his products too often.
The best thing we can say about The Thirteenth Guest may sound like faint praise, but it's actually not: right about the time we thought we were halfway done with the movie, it turned out we were more like two-thirds done with it. So -- though the overall impression is still of a very talky, fairly cheap production -- there are parts that actually move along nicely, and a few stylish shots to boot.
Not that that's enough to overcome The Thirteenth Guest's draggy bits and incoherent plot elements (i.e. why would someone wear a disguise when no one can see them?). But it's always a plus when a film doesn't make us want to off ourselves while we're in the act of watching it.
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