Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Dreadfully Boring

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

In the best of circumstances, meaning complete and uncut, "A Tragedy at Midnight" still could not be called a good movie. The writing is awful, the direction slipshod--shots rarely match, and in some scenes the actors don't seem to realize they're on camera; they stare down until their cue comes, at which time they suddenly leap into character--and the acting in many cases is pure burlesque. Most Abbott and Costello movies are more realistic. The goal was obviously to do a screwball mystery, ala "The Thin Man," with a little "Ghost Breakers" thrown in, but the characters here act like imbeciles. Having said that, the version of this film that is readily available on Netflix makes matters even worse by having had about one-quarter of its original running time chopped out, so as to fit into an hour time slot for television. This 53 minute version makes no sense--none--since the eliminated footage was apparently all exposition. What's left of the film involves a radio sleuth who makes the cops look like idiots (no big task here), and wakes up one hungover morning next to the corpse of a woman, not his wife. Can he solve the mystery, clear himself, elude the police, appease his wife, and still make his Wednesday broadcast? John Howard and Margaret Lindsay have very little chemistry, and Keye Luke's servant role makes the work of Mantan Moreland look dignified. There is also a huge cast of solid solid character actors, mostly wasted in virtual extra roles. Republic should have stuck to serials.

Let's get over all this stuff about Powell-Loy. Howard-Lindsay hold their own in this Republic gem. I am all for 'the Republic for which it stands'.The plot, not too original but, who cares? It was carried out beautifully by a cast of some of the era's most popular character actors.The dialog, penned by a femme, was great fun and so well handled by John Howard and Margaret Lindsay. Why she never achieved greater fame, I will never know. She has a Lamarr-like beauty, gorgeous from any angle, and when it comes to line delivery excuse me - but - she equals Loy.The chemistry between the stars - and they are that - is beautiful, the dialog is clever and witty.The judo moves were very convincing as delivered by Keye Luke who also was A-plus in line delivery."A Tragedy at Midnight" is thoroughly enjoyable at any hour.

I become aware of Margaret Lindsay fairly recently, (not through her more famous films where she had a supporting role to Bette Davis, but) through the low-budget mystery film series "Ellery Queen", where she played the title character's loyal and smart secretary, Nikki Porter; her presence brightened up those films, and I became a fan. Now I will watch any mystery movie that Lindsay made around that period (let's say, 1935-1945), and she made plenty. But of course most of them are extremely hard to find today, even in DVD-R copies. Luckily, I did manage to get one such copy (of acceptable quality) of "A Tragedy At Midnight", where she is teamed up with John Howard, another actor prolific in this genre (he played Bulldog Drummond several times). Lindsay and Howard play a loving couple (he's a radio detective, she's a writer) who find a dead body in their own apartment (which is actually not quite their own apartment), and go on the run so that they can solve the case and prove their innocence. The two leads do click together, and Lindsay is once again delightful to watch. Keye Luke is also amusing as their jiu-jitsu-practicing butler! The film moves fairly fast and has more than enough twists packed into its short (just under an hour) running time. It's a pleasant watch, but more of an appetizer than a full-course meal. **1/2 out of 4.

"A Tragedy AT MIDNIGHT" was a very entertaining mystery romance. John Howard and Margaret Lindsay made a great romantic detective team. Keye Luke, was also good as their ingenious servant, always on the spot to get them out of trouble.They were always one step ahead of the police in solving crimes and broadcasting solutions of crimes on their radio program, thereby frustrating the police who then wanted to get them off the air by finding something they could be arrested for.this appeared to be solved when our hero woke up one morning and found a woman with a knife in her back in his wife's bed.They then proceed to unravel the mystery. In some ways this picture is similar to the Thin Man series.I had a VHS copy of this film that I made off the air but the tape oxide eventually went bad. I hope the last remaining copy on nitrate based film is restored before the nitrate turns to powder. it would be a shame if the picture were lost.