Strange Affair (1944) Online

Another in a line of successful comedy/mysteries for Columbia's B-film assembly, starring EVELYN KEYES and ALLYN JOSLYN who get into all kinds of silly business while trying to solve a doctor's murder.

All of it is played for humorous effects and some of it actually works pretty well. Keyes is pert and vivacious as a frisky blonde who is always trailing behind hubby Joslyn (lucky for him) and helps nab the culprits just before the wind-up.

MARGUERITE CHAPMAN does nicely as a sophisticated femme fatale and SHEMP HOWARD has a brief comic routine as a laundry truck driver. HUGO HAAS has a pivotal role as a doorman friend of Joslyn.

It passes the time, a programmer that played the lower half of double bills in the '40s. Keyes almost overdoes the many farcical turns of her role but manages to be charming nevertheless, giving her role the light touch it needs and Joslyn is in fine style as her long-suffering husband.

Allyn Joslyn is fairly insufferable playing a cartoonist who continually annoys the local police while butting into their cases; as his better half, Evelyn Keyes yips and yelps with cartoonish abandon, trying to make something light and cute out of this script. Based on Oscar Saul's story "Stalk the Hunter", four screenwriters (Saul included) manage to turn this comedic murder mystery into a flighty "Thin Man" derivative (the opening sequence typifies the rest: a cute visual followed by outright silliness). Plot has a doctor poisoned at a social gathering, with another doctor the prime suspect. As usual, the law is always three steps behind the snooping marrieds, and the one-liners alternate between amusing and ridiculous. *1/2 from ****

This is obviously a sequel to Dangerous Blonds (1943). So why did their names change?

I guess now any male crime solver who is assisted (or hindered, as the case may be) by his wife is a "Thin Man" ripoff. The price of success, I suppose. Does that mean Bringing Up Baby (1938) is a "Thin Man" ripoff? How about A Shot In The Dark (1964)? At least in that one, the crime solver was a cop.

(In case anyone is interested, which I doubt, my favorite "Thin Man rip-off" is There's Always A Woman (1938), which I also reviewed.)

There are a few interesting stars in this one. Nina Foch, who was great in Escape in the Fog (1945), is mostly wasted in a small part. Edgar Buchanan, who played Uncle Joe on Petticoat Junction, younger and skinnier (although not actually skinny) and with more hair than I've ever seen him. Shemp Howard in a rehash of a routine that originally was about dividing up money but now is about filling a laundry bag. (If you want to see Shemp in a great role outside The Three Stooges, check out The Bank Dick (1940)).

The humor is a step up from the 3-year-old level of the Three Stooges. More like the 8-year-old level. Enjoyable enough, but I didn't keep it. I did keep Dangerous Blonds, though, which is a shade less juvenile, although still very silly and ridiculous.

Amateur detectives have been around in movies a long time before Nick and Nora (and Asta!) solved their first "Thin Man" murder mystery. Ten years after that, they were still going strong (having "Gone Home" the same year), and Powell had moved onto other mysteries with spouses (current and ex) Ginger Rogers and Jean Arthur, and other couples got along the murder mystery solving band wagon as well. So by the time that Allyn Joslyn and Evelyn Keyes jumped on that bandwagon for the entertaining but standard "Dangerous Blondes" in 1943, the idea was old hat. They are back again, although their character names are different, but it is basically more of the same, murder in high society and all sorts of suspects, both of high and low society, involved.

The revelation of the murder is actually pretty clever with the dead man sitting still at a huge dinner party at a lavish nightclub as if he had just had too much to drink and couldn't think of a word to say in his drunken stupor. But he's stiff in a different way, with smoke coming out of his mouth thanks to a lit cigarette which has done everything but light his lips on fire. The supporting cast is fine, including Marguerite Chapman as a delightfully nasty socialite and Shemp Howard as a temperamental truck driver whose truck nearly decapitates Joslyn in the opening scene. The script is just average though, giving no real surprises, and making this simply just an acceptable programmer that is practically identical to all the other murder mystery comedies released in the 1930's and 40's.