SUMMARY: RUNNING TIME: 1 Hr., 2 Min.
Released by Monogram Pictures Corporation in 1943, this black-and-white film is a remake of 1932’s The Thirteenth Guest. Both films were adapted from Armitage Trail’s 1929 crime pulp novel, The 13th Guest.
Note: Trail’s real name was Maurice R. Coons.
Arriving the night of her 21st birthday at the long-shuttered Morgan family mansion in New York, heiress Marie Morgan (Parrish) is startled to find someone has installed multiple working telephones within the home. In the dining room where its posh table and thirteen chairs were last used thirteen years before, Marie briefly recalls her terminally ill grandfather’s (Ingraham) last family dinner party.
Seated with him were his eleven heirs (some of whom are children) and the family attorney. Told that they all must wait thirteen years for Marie’s 21st birthday to learn of any possible inheritance, nearly all of the heirs share a mutual disdain amongst one another. Oddly enough, given that children are present, the grandfather openly hopes that at least of some of those present will also meet their graves by the time 8-year-old Marie is deemed old enough to appreciate the inheritance.
The flashback sequence ends by shifting back to the present-day. Per her late grandfather’s instructions, Marie opens his sealed last will and testament finding it consists only of an enigmatic code or possibly a safe combination. Moments later, in the darkened study, she is seemingly killed by electrocution. The police subsequently find Marie’s seemingly frozen corpse stationed at her assigned seat in the dining room, like she was at Grandpa Morgan’s dinner party.
Meanwhile, having been hired by Marie’s worried uncle (McVey), savvy private investigator Johnny Smith (Purcell) takes the lead in probing a series of homicides linked to the fateful Morgan dinner party. Along with his bumbling police counterpart (Ryan) and a squad of dim-witted cops, Smith realizes from a hand-drawn diagram that someone is eliminating the family’s surviving heirs per the party’s seating arrangement.
As shown, from a hidden room, a masked culprit is utilizing a rigged telephone at the Morgan mansion to electrocute victims and then returns their statue-like corpses to their spots at the dining room table.
It’s up to Smith to figure out who is out to kill for the Morgan inheritance. More so, are there still other conspirators implementing their own greedy schemes to access a fortune by any means necessary? Smith’s list of Morgan family suspects expands when Marie turns up alive. The question becomes: will a masked killer try to eliminate Grandpa Morgan’s evidently favorite heir a second time? Or is there more to Marie than first meets Smith’s eye?
Marie Morgan (adult) / Marie’s Impersonator: Helen Parrish
Marie (child): Shirley Jean Anderson
John “Johnny” Smith: Dick Purcell
Police Lt. Burke: Tim Ryan
Tom Jackson: John (or Jon) Dawson
District Attorney: Addison Richards
Harold “Bud” Morgan: John “Johnny” Duncan
Harold (child): Robert J. Anderson
“Speed” Dugan/McGinnis: Frank Faylen
Marjory Morgan: Jacqueline Dalya
Marjory (child): Uncredited
Adam Morgan: Paul McVey
Tom Jackson: John Dawson
Tom (child): Uncredited
Grandfather Morgan: Lloyd Ingraham
John Barksdale: Cyril Ring
Uncle John: Dick Gordon
Dr. Sherwood: Herbert Hayes
Police Sergeant: Mike Donovan
Carter: Lester Dorr
Joe: Joe “Snowflake” Toones
Uncle Wayne: Richard Neill.
REVIEW:
Apart from a ridiculously contrived Laura-like twist early on, Mystery of the 13th Guest packs too few noir surprises. For instance, the masked villain’s identity reveal won’t likely bewilder anyone. More disappointingly, no explanation is given for the culprit’s wicked methodology, let alone the teased significance of the empty thirteenth chair, as greed is the only implied motive. Hence, welcome intrigue from the plot’s initially macabre tone turns out mostly for naught.
What this film instead has going, strangely enough, is an enthusiasm for witty screwball humor. It’s sufficient compensation considering this obscure whodunnit is otherwise hampered by razor-thin genre stereotypes posing as characters. Despite their caricatured roles, Dick Purcell, Tim Ryan, Frank Faylen, &, in her limited screen time, Jacqueline Dalya, playfully pitch and catch jokes without disrupting the storyline too much.
Case in point: there is a hilarious gem at the end where Ryan’s exasperated police detective unloads on Faylen’s incompetent “Speed” for falling asleep on the job for the umpteenth time. As unremarkable as so many other scenes in this movie are, this sequence’s punchline demonstrates the black comedy potential in the script these actors have some fun with.
By comparison, most of the ensemble cast blandly play their roles exactly as one might expect for a 1943 ‘B’ film. In co-lead Helen Parrish’s case, unfortunately, her average damsel-in-distress’ I.Q. inexplicably diminishes in the story’s second half. It’s no wonder that her “Marie” becomes a forgettable love interest for Purcell’s detective and relegated to the supporting cast.
Mystery of the 13th Guest, in that sense, surely isn’t a must-see. Catching this witty caper, however, once as a freebie might be an unexpected treat for fans of comedic whodunnits. It also makes for a decent double-feature option for either 1945’s And Then There Were None or 2009’s spoofy Dark and Stormy Night (both in black-and-white).
Trivia Note: Passing away in August 1944, Dick Purcell was cinema’s first live-action Captain America. Purcell’s 1944 cliffhanger serial also posthumously made him the headliner of the first Marvel Comics-related theatrical production.
BRIAN’S ODD MOON RATING: 4½ Stars
IMAGE NOT AVAILABLE
