Overrated

Disappointment for a huge fan!

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Grandfather Lloyd Ingraham invites his family for dinner, but this is one greedy family. Twelve show up with a place set for a 13th guest that never arrives. At that party Ingraham tells all of them what a greedy, grasping group they are and announces that his fortune is going to his granddaughter who is 8 at the time on her 21st birthday. He gives a letter to his lawyer to be opened on her 21st birthday.With the arrival of the granddaughter 13 years later played by Helen Parrish bodies of the guests start dropping. One of them hires private detective Dick Purcell to find out about the deaths and the mysterious as yet unopened letter.This is a remake of an early Monogram feature that had a slightly better cast to it with the heiress played by Ginger Rogers. I'll be checking that one out soon as it is available for viewing.Hopefully it is not characterized by the sloppiness of Mystery Of The 13th Guest. Bad editing, bad writing, and perfunctory performances. A typical Monogram feature.

Despite some unfortunate comedy relief which tends to shatter the atmospheric mood so carefully built up by photographer, Mack Stengler – fully half the film is photographed in eerie darkness – this one emerges as a moderately exciting mystery thriller. Not the least of its intriguing aspects is how the star of the picture, who is killed in the first five minutes, is going to be revived. The situation itself is compelling, the plot devices offbeat and William Beaudine's direction – including an ingenious 350 degree pan – a considerable cut above his usual take-it-or-lump-it average. The cast is capable – in fact, Helen Parrish makes a really attractive heroine – and by Monogram's stingy standards, production values are quite fair.

I'm a big fan of B detective movies with wise-cracking heroes, but few of them are as bad as this one. The acting is abysmal, the dialog is flat (with characters making embarrassingly inappropriate attempts at witticisms), the story has a vaguely interesting premise but it goes nowhere.At least I think it goes nowhere. Honestly, about halfway through this hour-long movie my attention wandered and I went over to work on my computer while the movie kept running. I definitely missed some important plot points - for example, I have no idea who the 13th guest turned out to be, assuming that was ever explained. But giving this movie half my attention was still more attention than it deserved.

A young girl arrives at her ancestral home and is promptly murdered-- -or is she? Twelve years earlier the murdered woman, as a little girl, had attended a birthday party for her dying grandfather. Thirteen partygoers were invited but only twelve attended. The thirteenth guest was death.Now, in the present, the original twelve guests are members of the family fighting over the will and someone wants the money badly enough to kill for it. Detective Dick Purcell is called in to solve the crime, aided by comic sidekicks and the usual inept policemen who only seem to inhabit "B" mysteries. Directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, this 60 minute quickie is a darn good version of the Armitage Trail mystery and manages to be a little better that its 1932 predecessor-----though for some reason the 1943 film is much more difficult to see.