One of my all time favorites.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Suicide or Murder? When the much hated Archer Coe turns up dead and is believed to be a suicide, Philo Vance and Detective Heath steps into the scene to find out why a rich man would consider suicide as an option. Things become a bit stranger when Archer Coe's brother, Brisbane, turns up dead in a closet. Vance and Heath enlist the help of poor Dr. Doremus who never seems to get a chance to eat while this investigation is going on. It must be murder - but who and why?! A film I really enjoyed watching! It's a mystery film that is peppered quite a bit with comedy. Detective Heath is the funniest - and has an outstanding speaking voice! Dr. Doremus is very funny as well! Two of my favorite characters in the entire film.8.5/10

William Powell displays his amateur sleuth chops pre- Thin Man series in this mild whodunit that neither excites or offends. Powell's Philo Vance is as sharp and observant as Nick Charles but director Michael Curtiz does little with the supporting cast who spend most of their time feeling cheated and looking guilty.Arthur Coe commits suicide in his locked bedroom or so it seems. Homicide hanger on Vance thinks otherwise and proves the coroner wrong. Now all they have to do is find the killer. Vance once again takes the lead while detective in charge Heath (Eugene Palette) bungles matters. As the plot thickens so do the suspects.Vance remains sharp and sober throughout but he is surrounded by imbeciles so his wit and insight is met with blank faced incomprehension and annoying bluster by Palette's Heath who desperately wants to slap the cuffs on anyone. The crime itself and it's solving is filled with Rube Goldberg ingenuity that doesn't wash and Powell isolated with a cast of expressionless bores begs for a Myrna Loy entrance that never comes allowing The Kennel Murder Case to go to the dogs.

I decided to invest 73 minutes of my to life to THE KENNEL MURDER CASE for one reason only and that is it's directed by the great Michael Curtiz who if he's not considered the greatest film director of the 20th Century is certainly the greatest director of the classic period of Hollywood . If you have no idea of of who he is please take the time and trouble of looking at his body of work . He has directed some of the greatest films of all time . After you've done that you could perhaps watch THE KENNEL MURDER CASE which I think proves the point that not even the most gifted director can a good movie unless they're given a good script The problem with the screenplay starts even before the runtime . The title fools the audience in to thinking they're going to be watching a story set at a kennel club and indeed the opening location takes place there where a prize winning dog is found dead but this has got nothing to do with the main plot involving a suspected suicide that turns out is a murder The screenplay is confused , inconsistent and just plain bizarre . We're introduced to Philo Vance a sort of detective who's obviously based on Sherlock Holmes and watching William Powell as Vance you're instantly reminded of Bail Rathbone in his famous role as Holmes . Archer Cole is found with a bullet wound to his head in a locked room so it's an obvious suicide . Obvious to everyone except Vance who states " Suicide is a psychological impossibility to Coe " How he arrives to this conclusion is unclear . Maybe Jack Nicholson didn't warn him ? Vance shows himself to be lacking in perceptive skills when it's revealed by a doctor who has just had his breakfast or lunch interrupted ( It's never made clear and the film contains these gaps in continuity ) Coe has not only shot himself but he was bludgeoned and stabbed as well . So think about it - someone is whacked over the head and has been stabbed and this great detective called Philo Vance didn't notice this ? I have a theory that people who enjoy whodunnits are slightly less intelligent than the mainstream population but delude themselves that they're much cleverer than the vast majority of the population . If they're able to work out who the murderer is before the detective that some how makes them a shining intellectual on a par with Albert Einstien or Stephen Hawking but we the audience are supposed to swallow totally implausible things such as Coe receiving a fatal stab wound to the back and not realising that he's been stabbed in the first place . It really is a ridiculous piece of storytelling and despite it being one of the director's lesser works Curtiz does at least inject a pace and rhythm to the movie making it far less stagy than it could have been

There were times when this movie seemed to get a whole lot more complicated than it needed to be, but I guess that's part of it's charm. Detective Philo Vance's powers of observation seem greater than all the Oriental sleuths of the era combined when it comes down to that final evaluation of how the murders were committed. The dropping of the dagger into the Chinese vase was the kicker for me; I mean, couldn't somebody have just dropped it? Vance (William Powell) had a line early in the film about Archer Coe's 'psychological impossibility' to kill himself - I had to think about that for a while. I was left wondering if there's some scientific basis in fact for that concept to be true, not having studied psychology myself. Seems logical, but then there's always the case that doesn't fit the rules.You know, I got a kick out of the agitated coroner (Etienne Girardot), who reminded me of Star Trek's Dr. McCoy the couple of times he stated "I'm a doctor, not a magician" and "I'm a doctor, not a detective". I can picture DeForrest Kelley watching the film and saying to himself - 'I'll have to use that sometime'.Once the killer's identity is revealed, it doesn't seem like such a big surprise, but up till then it's really anybody's guess. But Archer and Brisbane Coe aside, the film didn't answer the central question posed by the title, and the murder I was really interested in - who killed Sir Thomas MacDonald's dog Ghillie?