Strong and Moving!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The star is shot during filming, and Detective Sheehan (John Wray) must solve the murder. The stange and mysterious Bela Lugosi is Steiner, studio manager. It looks like "Marcia" (Adrienne Ames) was involved, but was she, or wasn't she? David Manner is "Drew". Some fun lines... picture, sound, and editing are a little shaggy, but watchable. and quite the provocative movie poster, in the top left corner, as of today. CLEARLY this was pre-film-code. Pretty bland role for Lugosi... he was usually a big, scary character, but only has a small side player role here. Very first film for director Ed Marin. did lots of murder stuff after this one.

THE DEATH KISS is an acceptable murder mystery from the early days of sound cinema. The whole movie takes place on a movie set, which makes for quite a fun and atypical viewing experience, and the opening sequence is a cracker: a character is murdered by a mystery assassin in film, only for the cast to discover that the actor has been killed for real. Which of them did it? This film has a short running time like many of its ilk, which means that it runs through the various police procedural bits at speed. The comic relief is quite laboured but I enjoyed it, especially the efforts of the bumbling security guard. Horror fans will enjoy seeing Bela Lugosi in support, as he's given something a little different to do here, and there's even a role for Edward Van Sloan, teaming up with Lugosi again after Dracula. THE DEATH KISS isn't an amazing film or anything, but it's an effective time-waster and I particularly enjoyed the reveal at the climax.

"The Death Kiss," a humor-laced murder mystery set in a Hollywood movie studio, unspools at a snappy pace offering one delight after another: a striking opening, followed by the introduction of a succession of colorful characters played by Everett Van Sloan, Bela Lugosi, Harold Minjir, Alexander Carr, the photogenic Adrienne Ames and David Manners as a studio writer who tries to figure out whodunit. There is a loose, breezy feel, with the camera tracking and panning freely not only around the movie studio but into its nooks and crannies as the dialogue zings with amusing exchanges and wisecracks. There are even hand-tinted flames, gunshots and flashlight beams during various action sequences.

While filming the closing scene of "The Death Kiss", leading man Myles Brent is actually killed. Having played around with, or been married to, most of the women connected with the movie studio, there are lots of suspects. When leading lady Marcia Lane is arrested for the killing, her suiter, a studio writer, starts to investigate the killing in order to prove her innocence. The 30's and early 40s had a slew of these kind of dark mysterious drawing room dramas made in Hollywood. Many shorts in this genre were made as well. Not sure why. The genre is still popular in theatre of in the UK so maybe that's where it started.Anyway, this is not a half bad movie. It's a bit slow, but they all are and for a poverty row flick it's quite watchable. Three of the actors from Dracula are re-united. Guess their careers took a quick down turn after Dracula.