Midnight Manhunt

Ann Savage and William Gargan star as rival newspaper reporters in this wild murder comedy complete with wax dummies, a wandering corpse, dumb cops, and George Zucco at his sinister best.

Leo Gorcey is very funny as a helper and general chatterbox at the Last Gangster Wax Museum. He toys around with the electric chair exhibit and tosses off a fair number of Bowery Boys-style malapropisms ("It's an optical delusion").

Zucco opens the picture by creeping into a hotel room, shooting a man and stealing a small case of diamonds; besides the mysterious Zucco and the adventurous reporters, police detectives Paul Hurst (dumb flatfoot) and Don Beddoe (harassed and exasperated lieutenant) are soon also attempting to track down the murdered man's body, which appears then disappears more than once.

A silly subplot concerns Savage and Gargan—a onetime romantic couple for whom, as Gorcey puts it, "the milk of romance slightly curdled." Gargan persists in disrupting Savage's efforts toward solving the case and landing the big story, for reasons that are less than clear; their conflict is supposed to be cute but is instead mildly irritating.

Overall, it's predictable but still very enjoyable; while the dialog may be lowbrow, it's still moderately clever, and good humor and energetic performances make up for lack of suspense and surprises. Good fun for fans of B movies—or any of these stars.