Excellent but underrated film

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

To judge by "Murder by the Clock" (1931), never was a director more aptly named than Edward Sloman. Slow man? Under Sloman's snail-speed direction, time and clock seem to be not just standing still, but actually running backwards. Of course, the stagey, dialogue-riddled, but proudly "B"-grade and super-suspenseless script doesn't help. Nor do the cheesy production values, plus the self-consciously hammy acting from all concerned, with but two exceptions, namely Martha Mattox and rather unexpectedly, William "Stage" Boyd. "Who's the very worst offender among the players?" you ask. Irving Pichel, I'm sorry to say! Although Lilyan Tashman runs Pichlel mighty close, she does model some really attractive clothes.

Curiously enough, none of the previous reviewers have picked up on this film's title, which has negligible bearing upon anything that actually happens; of which there is plenty. What 'Murder by the Clock' sorely lacks is decent direction, editing and a music score; what it has is a jaunty plot, a magnificent (though underused) churchyard and crypt set, atmospheric photography by Karl Struss, an entertaining cast of wierdos and weaklings. And the breathtaking Lilyan Tashman.Blanche Friderici is Julia Endicott, matriarch of the Endicott clan, plainly nearing the end of its thinning bloodline; her only heirs being Philip (Irving Pichel), a hulking simpleton capable of breaking a man's neck with his bare hands but little else, and Herbert (Walter McGrail) a drunken weakling completely under the thumb of his gold digging wife Laura, who Julia sums up as "a malicious designing creature, ought to be hung for a witch." The late Lilyan Tashman is an absolute blast as this platinum blonde Lady Macbeth smirking evilly one minute, shedding crocodile tears the next while flirting like mad with every man in sight with a pulse ("I could be awfully fond of you"), her curvaceous, Amazonian chassis seductively on display in a clinging satin number that would probably have caused censorship problems a few years later.The unfunny comic relief provided by Irish cop Regis Toomey and maid Sally O'Neil is rendered wholly superfluous by Tashman's rollicking performance, which gets plenty of appreciative laughs. She meets her match, however, in Lt. Valcour (William 'Stage' Boyd), who engages her in a final battle of wills, "one artist to another".

In this wonderfully atmospheric, creepy, classic 'dark old house mystery', complete with everything from secret passages to Edgar Allan Poe's fear of being buried alive, we definitely learn that, although in real life they've probably been around ever since Eve, the femmes fatales were also present in movies long before the term became popular as a characterization for fatally beautiful and sensuous women who lead men astray - usually in order to get into a large fortune...And that's exactly what Lilyan Tashman alias Laura Endicott does here: blonde and provocative, she turns one man's head after the other, turning them all against each other to kill one another, to inherit the large estate of her husband's aunt. She stops at nothing, and she thinks no one can stop her, and no one can resist her - but HERE she finally makes her big mistake: there IS someone who (even though with some difficulty, as the way he looks at her just before he takes her to the police station clearly shows...) CAN resist her; unbending, incorruptible Lieutenant Valcour (William Boyd)...A wonderfully enjoyable, suspenseful, entertaining mixture of daring pre-Code sensuality and good old-fashioned murder mystery, one of the best of its kind, with a great cast, stylish settings - and quite a clear 'message': Beware of dangerous blonds...!

Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde...and Murder By The Clock??? There's a reason this semi-horror thriller hasn't joined the ranks of those famous movies from 1931, and it's that this film is nowhere near the same level. It has some good things, but can't decide if it's a mystery (a shadowy figure commits a murder, and about five minutes later lets the audience know he did it!) horror (some mild Edgar Allan Poe Premature Burial stuff) or Vamp movie - the female kind, not the undead! The plot basically concerns Laura Endicott's (Lilyan Tashman) manipulation of the pathetic males she's lumbered with into each committing a murder in order to get her hands on the family fortune. It's fun to see Irving Pichel - after all he directed An American Tragedy and The Most Dangerous Game! - as the retarded brother constantly going on about killing people with knives and strangling them! And the film raises a few atmospheric moments. One or two of the cast moved on to Paramount's other horror show that year - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Murder By The Clock failed to set the box office bell ringing, probably because it lacks the new supernatural element of the previously mentioned horror flicks. The direction is nothing special and the pace is slightly leaden. But it ain't bad as these things go, and is worth a look.