I didn't think it was possible but I finally saw a film that overtook Castaway as having the most spoiler written piece of promotional material.
Now You See; Castaway had a trailer that if you decided to watch throw till the end it would reveal the end of the movie.
Thus eliminating any general tension the film had.
But 'A Shriek in the Night' goes One Step farther. You don't even have to see a trailer (which I'm pretty sure they didn't have)
You just have to look at the poster and you'll literally see the killer right there in the centre holding the main actress.
It's kind of ridiculous especially considering they tried to leave the identity of the murderer a little vague at the beginning.
So I have the very first Allied picture I've seen.
Not to be confused with 'Allied artist' which is an entirely different group of poverty row inspired movie productions (At the time when this came out they would have been known as Monogram so the confusion wouldn't have existed.)
But alas that means this is a cheap B-movie and I have to kind of forgive the weird and very cheap film that used to create this movie. There's this weird background noise and it sounds like it's raining all the time.
I think it's just the sound of the projector (film) that somebody picked up on a recording of this done either by the digital process or God willing somebody just hooked up a VCR to one of those old cameras and prayed for the best.
The story revolves around this murder case of a guy falling off the balcony to his death.
First it's considered suicide, then is debated to be a murder. Then it's debated to be a murder interlinked with this monster known as Martini, which then becomes intermixed with yet a different murderer relating to the guy on the poster who poisons people in their sleep using lethal doses of carbon monoxide or some other deadly gas.
The point is that this movie had like four different venues it could have gone down and it decided we're going to have a little chunk of each one alongside this weird romance between Ginger Rogers character and this guy that she kind of interested in even though he screwed her over several times now.
Also there's this police chase on the case who I think wants to be Sherlock Holmes but doesn't entirely know how to do it.
There's this final plot involving Ginger Rogers former job firing her because her boyfriend stole the information she was supposed to give to them and put it in his own newspaper cuz he works for a rival journalist group.
All of these many stories are compacted into a small one hour and 14 minute long film and it still feels a little doll at certain moments. We also have a lot of slapstick from several different bumbling female characters and I have no idea why any of them (excluding the maid) or even here.
It's just a feeling time which we really shouldn't have had to do given the several plot points we could have followed.
Now overall I don't think it's all that bad a film. It's cheap, it's simple. kind of loses track of a few Side Stories but it's just this Little B Movie that wants to still an hour worth of your time with some silly antics and a murder story that's easy enough to follow but still maintains one or two interesting plot points to keep you invested.
By no means what I recommend anybody watch this movie is an obligation. but you could stick it on the background while drawing, cooking or doing just about anything else you might find something enjoyable about it.
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