MOVIES LIST 1935-1941
 he Spanish Cape Mystery US (1935)
Source: novel "The
Spanish Cape Mystery" In this low-budget mystery Donald Cook plays Ellery Queen in a low-key, poker-faced fashion, which may not be terribly exciting but is actually closer to the original concept than most of the movie Queens. Although some liberties are taken with the classic plot the story emerges fairly unscathed. Cook's flirtatious Ellery is unrelated to any EQ novel, and the blustery Sheriff is the worst kind of comic relief. Its distributor, Republic, many years ago issued it in a truncated form for local television stations. In so doing, they thought the deleted footage would never be needed again and it was discarded. Now the opening sequence (the only part of the film in which the Inspector appears) is thought to be irretrievably lost. |
he Mandarin Mystery US (1937) Director: Ralph
Staub
Ellery Queen solves two murders - both committed in impenetrably locked rooms and recovers stolen stamp worth $50,000. Falling in love with the primary suspect Jo Temple, Ellery sets about to retrieve the stolen goods and solve the murders. The actor whose initials were E.Q. Eddie Quillan, a talented performer was woefully miscast as Queen. Republic opted to play 'The Mandarin Mystery' for laughs -- another big mistake.
Director: Charles Barton Source: stage play "Danger, Men Working" In this comical murder mystery, three playwrights use $500 in advance
money to get an apartment in which to write a mystery for
John Atherton. Several months later they haven't
been able to produce a single page. A drunken neighbor staggers in and
interrupts their brainstorming before passing out on the floor.
Some $15,000 fall out of his pocket and after searching
the content of his pockets they find a black book. This book contains names
of well-known men and next to the names a sum of money is listed. The three playwrights then
pretend that he is really dead and begin trying to figure out how it might have happened.
They make up this story where the man is a blackmailer
and they end up posing as policemen and doctor to call on the men in the
book. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the drunk ends up dead for real and now the
writers have some real work to do. |
 llery Queen, Master Detective US (1940)
Source: novel "The Door Between" For reasons that defy logic, the studio elected to transform the brilliant, analytical Queen into a hopeless bumbler. Investigating the killing is Ellery Queen, his father, and another mystery writer, Nikki Porter. Lindsay has some good moments as Nikki, but there's too much talk and too little intrigue. Ellery makes a daring proposal to her at the fade out: "Will you be my...secretary?"! -even though it's clear she's got more brains in her left toe than he has in his whole carcass.A novelization (by non-EQ hands) was published (later re-issued as "TheVanishing Corpse")
69 min, Black & White Like the first entry in Columbia's "Ellery Queen" series, this film depicts its amateur-criminologist hero as an oafish ignoramus. Wong is good as always, but wasted here. Slow going. The influence of MGM's successful "Thin Man" series was obvious, as Ellery and Nikki engage in more comic squabbling than in sleuthing. An interesting cast, but that's about it. Like all of the remaining Columbia entries, it was written by Eric Taylor based on a story idea (fragment, line of dialogue from a radio script, whatever) by EQ, and directed by James Hogan. A novelization was published, but the cousins did not write. |
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llery Queen and the Perfect Crime US
(1941)
Source: novel "The Devil to Pay" 68 min, Black & White Ralph Bellamy's third of four appearances as Ellery Queen. Probably the 'best' of the Columbia Queens, since it played fairly straight with the storyline of the novel, even while totally changing its setting and characters. Still too much Thin Manning, however, to satisfy mystery fans. Nothing perfect at all in this entry about the murder of a shady stockbroker. The script was novelized and published (but not written by EQ).
Source: novel "The Dutch
Shoe Mystery" Despite the fact that Ellery seems to be as dumb as a stone, he manages to solve the mystery. Loosely adapted from 'The Dutch Shoe Mystery', this bastardization is painful to watch. Slapstick comedy, with Hurst and Dugan as a couple of incompetent hit-men, switched bodies, broken legs, and other knee-slapping idiocies. It's no wonder Ralph Bellamy called it quits after this one.
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Introduction |
Floor Plan | Q.B.I. |
List of Suspects | Whodunit?
| Q.E.D. | Kill as
directed | New |
Copyright Copyright © MCMXCIX-MMXI Ellery Queen, a website on deduction. All rights reserved. |
Editor: James Smith
death,
it became "The Crime Nobody Saw" (referring to the stage play,
perhaps?). With a script by Bertram Millhauser (who worked on the Basil
Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series) this comedy mystery sounds like it could be
an interesting little film. An adaptation appeared in
