This is the sixth Philo Vance mystery film and the fifth and last starring William Powell, five films which he made between 1929 and 1933. (In 1930 a single Philo Vance film intervened which starred Basil Rathbone, THE BISHOP MURDER CASE, see my review). After this, Philo Vance was played by eight different actors until 1947, when the series ended (it had gone into abeyance during the War, between 1940 and 1947). Here William Powell continues to become more and more recognisable as the William Powell we all admire from his later films. Although the script gives him little opportunity, he still manages to make the occasional comment with the typical Powellesque mixture of nonchalance and challenge. Insouciance is never that far away, and one can sense it trembling on his lips. His sense of humour peeks through the workmanlike script from time to time, like a mouse glancing through its hole at a cheese on the table but not daring to try to approach it. (A whole cheese of the old-fashioned kind bears a certain resemblance to a director's cut, doesn't it? It is more nearly what its Maker intended.) This film has many characters, including seven murder suspects. The plot is convoluted, there is more than one murder, and there may even be more than one murderer. A central feature of the complex plot is that old chestnut, the murder in a locked room which is bolted from the inside. In this film, unlike others one could mention, we see a detailed and closeup view of just how that trick is done. I am not aware of when the famous motif of a murder in a sealed and bolted room first entered detective fiction, and doubtless experts in the genre might have some idea. But here we have it on screen in 1933, and trackers of ingenious plot twists can add that as one of the early dots which they join in their graph. But there are many red herrings and other complications in this tale. There may be not one, not two, but three murder weapons, for instance. Which one did the deed? Why are there so many? The sub-plot of a Chinese cook who is really a Columbia University graduate specializing in the acquiring of rare porcelain adds a further twist. Certainly this story was very meticulously plotted, with as many intersecting possibilities as a well-cut jewel has facets. It gleams from all angles, and the answers may come from more than a single one. Detective story lovers will not be disappointed. Mary Astor is one of the two female stars, but has little to do other than walk through her lines. This is a plot film, not a character film, and nothing matters but whodunit, or whodunn'em. There are no wisecracks or smart dialogue in this film, but it does have a running humorous sub-plot of the coroner whose meals keep being interrupted as he is repeatedly summoned to check on more bodies, and he gets grumpier and grumpier. He is very funny, and this lightens the film up a little. The film never rises above the mediocre except in its plot elements. Oh yes, there are cute dogs in this film. In most films, we get cute girls, but in this one we get cute dogs.
Review of The Kennel Murder Case
