The Mystic Hour (1933)

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Masha
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Joined: January 16th, 2015, 10:22 am

The Mystic Hour (1933)

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The Mystic Hour (1933) aka At Twelve Midnight (1934) aka (as it is listed on Amazon Prime) 12 at Midnight (1934)

The storyline of this is quite good for a budget mystery movie: A fleeing robber shoots a policeman. A citizen gives chase by car and then over rooftops. The pursuit ends in the bedroom of a sassy young heiress. Heiress falls for citizen, citizen falls for heiress.

Robber worked for a mastermind called: "The Fox". The Fox uses the gimmick of warning his victims in advance.

The Fox's next target is the jewels of an older lady. She is by coincidence the aunt of the citizen in the opening adventure. He lays a trap and nearly catches them. He fails but does foil the robbery.

The romance between heiress and citizen quickly advances to setting a wedding date. The heiress' guardian can not allow her to marry because it would mean handing over management of her finances and he has been stealing from her trust fund. The guardian hatches the idea to kidnap the citizen under the guise that it is revenge by The Fox.

There is an interesting twist to the kidnapping also but it would be a spoiler to reveal it here.

I am sorry to say that this movie is not as good as the story deserves. The heiress (Lucille Powers) is suitably young and pretty while the citizen (Charles Hutchison) is late-middle-aged with a paunch and a second chin. Montagu Love is quite acceptable as the primary villain but Charles Middleton plays a very flat secondary. To say that all other performances are perfunctory is almost a kindness.

The cinematography is minimal. There are no transitions -- representative of this is at the end: there is a chase through the elegant landscaping outside a house and then they are on an unpaved path through the scrub at the top of a cliff by the sea. Most scenes have no camera movement of any kind. The most camerawork comes into play is at the beginning when the camera is overcranked during the chase scene as if it was for a silent serial.

I am glad that I watched this movie. I recommend it as more of a curiosity with interesting aspects rather than as happy escapism.

6.1/10
Avatar: Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya
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