Strangers of the Evening (1932)

Very Cool!!!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Strangers in the Evening (1932)* 1/2 (out of 4)Really bad and really confusing murder/mystery has a body come up missing at the local morgue but one of the workers claims the dead man moved himself. At the same time there's a murder investigation going on for the morgue worker who got into an argument with a girl's father when he disapproved of their relationship. Mean while the local detective (Eugene Palette) is dealing with a man who can't remember anything except for one woman (Zasu Pitts).STRANGERS IN THE EVENING is a pretty bad movie on many levels but it's almost worth watching due to how bizarre and confusing it is. The film clocks in less than 65 minutes yet it headlining star Pitts doesn't show up until nearly thirty minutes into the movie. What makes matters even worse is that there are characters who come into the film and then disappear without any reason why and then reappear later. There are way too many characters in this short film and obviously something got lost in the writing because a lot happens that makes very little sense.At the very end a few of the characters take the cheap route and explain what we've just watched but that's really no help. Pitts really isn't given too much to do so I'm going to guess the low-budget meant they only had her for a few days. Palette is fun as the detective but he too is pretty much wasted with the bad screenplay. Harold Waldridge deserves special mention as he plays a sissy morgue worker who is constantly scared. To say the character is annoying would be an understatement.STRANGERS IN THE EVENING doesn't work as a mystery, a comedy or anything else for that matter.

This murder mystery cum comedy is seriously hard work to enjoy. Talky and slow moving mystery concerns a couple of bodies turning up at the local morgue, then disappearing, with detectives seemingly bombarded by unusual suspects but no motives. Framed for the murder of one of the corpses, local Doctor (von Eltz) decides to solve the crime himself before he's wrongly arraigned.Zasy Pitts offers comic timing and a familiar hound-dog expression and urban drawl, but even her professional touch can't muster enough spark to light this drab affair. Miriam Seegar is an attractive souther belle with little more to do here than hang like the handbag that adorns her arm and deliver inane dialogue. Warner Richmond also features in a trademark role as the conniving villain.Frequent newspaper inserts substitute for the narrative, while there's the usual silhouettes and shady conspiracies to thicken the plot, alluding to much more than is eventually delivered. There's an amusing punch-up near the end, and the parallel story lines successfully connect at the film's 'all is explained' conclusion, but even at only 65 minutes, it's still a bit of a yawn.

I'm a fan of Zasu Pitts, so then this came up on YouTube, I jumped. Zasu doesn't show up until the second half of the film - I call that false advertising. Today's audience should not expect comedy. There are scenes that hint at mild amusement, but don't expect more. It seems as if the writers came up with scenes with comic potential, but didn't know how to pay it off. 1932 was early in the talkie era, and they just hadn't worked out timing yet. There's a lot of the talk-pause acting that made the earliest talkies stiff to later audiences. I just didn't find this movie worth finishing - even when Zasu finally made her entrance.

I suppose it goes without saying that 1930s America is a different culture than we live in today. The humor of this movie is incredibly foreign. For the entire movie I felt like the dumb blond who doesn't understand the jokes. The plot was complicated, but all and all pretty good. The acting is pretty decent. The fight scene is laughable, the one part of the movie where I think I understood the humor. The movie is set up as a mystery and in the good parts of the movie you wonder what's going on (in a suspenseful way.) And in the bad parts of the movie you wonder what's going on (in a confused way.) The ending does a fair job of cleaning up the confusion. If one's a fan of slap-stick comedy I would say this is probably a classic, but even as one who just don't get it I can say "Strangers of the Evening" tells a good enough story to earn a 6.