Super-Sleuth (1937)

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Super-Sleuth stars Jack Oakie as a detective-playing actor who taunts the police for failing to catch a criminal that then targets him. This isn't a mystery - we know who the killer is early on. The only real mystery of the movie is the killer's motive, but don't expect an answer to that.Oakie is an amusing guy who plays his idiocy well, breezing down the street with - to quote a t-shirt - all the confidence of a mediocre white man.Edgar Kennedy does his usual schtick well, and Ann Sothern is likable even though she and Oakie have absolutely no degree of chemistry.The worst thing in the movie is a black servant who is a particularly egregious example of the way Hollywood turned African Americans into idiot children. It is painful to watch.I wouldn't go so far as to recommend this film, but Oakie does make it watchable.

I usually find movies of this era poorly written, over-acted, and the comedies not funny. This one is funny thanks to Jack Oakie. Ann Southern and the other actors did over-act, see.

Somebody's out to kill Jack Oakie, a movie detective who seems intent on breaking into real life detective work. Other than the obvious critics who criticize his hamming, there's Ann Sothern, a studio employee who reluctantly ends up in most of his schemes, the cowardly Willie Best (cast again in a racial stereotype) and the sinister looking Eduardo Ciannelli, a spooky professor. There's really little amusement in this, that is until the ending confrontation in a haunted house where trapped doors and secret entrances keep the characters disappearing and reappearing. Edgar Kennedy adds another slow-burning detective with little sense and lots of temper to his credits. The finale may have you in stitches, but there's little else to laugh at in this weak programmer.

A crime-comedy, with Jack Oakie very personable as a movie detective who is short on brains. Famous actors are getting poison pen letters, which we learn quickly are from house-of-horrors owner Eduardo Ciannelli, whose motive seems to be revenge for bad acting. Oakie gets such a letter announcing he'll be killed, so he goes to Ciannelli, his friend, and says he knows who sent it! It's the one sending all those poison pen letters. That's the level of Oakie's intelligence (and the level of the comedy in the script). Ciannelli has lots of opportunities to kill Oakie, including with a rifle with a gunsight. The comedy comes from Oakie, his servant, Willie Best (again shamefully stereotyped), and the hapless police inspector, Edgar Kennedy. Ann Sothern seems wasted as Oakie's publicity manager.