It's one of those inexpensive B features that were ground out by the studios to accompany their major releases. The direction and editing, by studio hacks you never heard of, rush the pace so there's never a dull second as brash Lloyd Nolan, as Private Investigator Mike Shayne, unravels a somewhat complicated plot involving blackmail, murder, and a magician's act.
The plot is almost dispensable. It opens with a dark and stormy night and a body being buried hurriedly in somebody's back yard. The central figures are Marjorie Weaver, who is petite, sassy, and cute. She hires Nolan to find out why someone took a shot at her in the dark bedroom of her father's country mansion. It HAS to be a mansion because there's so much rushing about from room to room that you could hardly place the story in a mobile home.
I rather like Lloyd Nolan. He sounds a lot like a New Yorker but was born in a San Francisco neighborhood populated with immigrants from New York City. His features are those of everyman. They have all the interest of a hard-boiled egg, yet they're reassuring. Lloyd Nolan -- movie star. Why, he's a beacon for all of us.
The Michael Shayne movies were a series similar to many others. If it wasn't Mike Shayne it was The Falcon. They were all unpretentious time fillers and kept the kids involved through sheer mindlessness. The Shayne series would occasionally come up with some bon mots and they'd be done effortlessly. In one of them, a dead body is found strangled with piano wire, it's head under the pedals. "Oh, suicide, eh?" Here, a butler is "as quiet as a moose." And someone wasn't really eavesdropping, he just happened to be passing by and got his ear caught on the door knob.
If you're not in search of a challenge, this is a satisfying flick.
The plot is almost dispensable. It opens with a dark and stormy night and a body being buried hurriedly in somebody's back yard. The central figures are Marjorie Weaver, who is petite, sassy, and cute. She hires Nolan to find out why someone took a shot at her in the dark bedroom of her father's country mansion. It HAS to be a mansion because there's so much rushing about from room to room that you could hardly place the story in a mobile home.
I rather like Lloyd Nolan. He sounds a lot like a New Yorker but was born in a San Francisco neighborhood populated with immigrants from New York City. His features are those of everyman. They have all the interest of a hard-boiled egg, yet they're reassuring. Lloyd Nolan -- movie star. Why, he's a beacon for all of us.
The Michael Shayne movies were a series similar to many others. If it wasn't Mike Shayne it was The Falcon. They were all unpretentious time fillers and kept the kids involved through sheer mindlessness. The Shayne series would occasionally come up with some bon mots and they'd be done effortlessly. In one of them, a dead body is found strangled with piano wire, it's head under the pedals. "Oh, suicide, eh?" Here, a butler is "as quiet as a moose." And someone wasn't really eavesdropping, he just happened to be passing by and got his ear caught on the door knob.
If you're not in search of a challenge, this is a satisfying flick.