Newspaper magnate Lord Studholme is throwing a party in honor of Her Serene Highness Princess Amelia of Corsova. Among the guests: Guy, Studholme's secretary; Peggy, Studholme's daughter who is in love with (and might already be secretly married to) Guy; Peggy's friend Joan whom Studholme is trying to blackmail into having an affair; Chiddiatt, a flamboyant writer whose work is always trashed in Studholme's papers. Eventually, police commissioner Sir John Holland, Joan's father, shows up. The group plays a party murder game with all guests playing characters using information given to them on a card. One person is assigned to be the victim and one to be the investigator who interviews everyone and tries to figure out who the killer is. But during this game, the lights go out and a real dead body is found: Lord Studholme. With almost everyone at the party having a grudge of some sort against him, Sir John has his work cut out for him as he investigates for real. This feels like an average Agatha Christie mystery (though it was based not on Christie but on a play by Roland Pertwee who wrote dozens of British films in the 30s and 40s) and it does indeed play out like you'd expect, although the suspects are all let out of the house, and the finale is set in a courtroom instead of a drawing room, and there is a surprising climax. With a running time of one hour, it's compact, feeling like an episode of the modern-day Poirot series, with a full half-hour set up for character development before the murder occurs. The acting is solid all around. Leslie Banks is fine as Sir John; other standouts include Malcolm Keen as Studholme, Ian Hunter (pictured) as Guy, and the always eccentric Ernest Thesiger as the eccentric writer. This is an early film from Michael Powell done mostly in a workmanlike style, though with some nicely fluid camerawork. Entertaining if predictable. Retitled The Murder Party for American release. [YouTube]
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