CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Lechuguilla A rich old woman with an annoying chuckle invites her relatives over to her big house for a week, so that she can study them "just like a scientist studies rats in a laboratory." Her rationale is to determine which one of the relatives deserves her $3 million dollars when she dies. The light, overall tone of the film conveys the impression that the film was intended as a parody of murder mysteries.The protagonist is Bob White (Wallace Ford), a "famous columnist", who worms his way into the house, after a murder occurs. Eventually, an inept sheriff also shows up. So there's no famous detective or crime solver, like a Hercule Poirot or Sherlock Holmes, and the story suffers because of that.I incorrectly guessed the identity of the killer, but I wasn't that drawn in to the story to begin with. There are too many suspects, and the script gives them little or no characterization. Absence of a well-known detective doesn't help, and neither does the lighthearted tone. The end provides a bit of interesting irony to the underlying theme.B&W photography is acceptable, I suppose, given the era. Scratchy sound effects and clearly audible static are annoying. Casting and acting are marginal. Background music is nondescript, manipulative, and in some scenes too loud.With its contrived, paint-by-numbers script, its barely passable visuals and audio, and its cheap sets, "Murder By Invitation" is not a movie I would care to watch again.

MartinHafer "Murder By Invitation" is what's often referred to as 'an old dark house film'. This is because quite a few films like it were made--films where a group of people find themselves at a spooky old house--and they are killed off one by one. Interestingly, this film goes far as even talk about this sort of film when one of the characters mentions early on that this reminds her of "The Cat and the Canary"--one of the earliest and perhaps most famous of the genre. I liked this gentle poke at this sort of film cliché. And, in addition to being an old dark house film, it's also a 'know-it-all reporter film'--another very, very popular sort of film from the era.The story is about a wacky old lady whose greedy relatives can't wait for her to die so they can get her fortune. The film begins with them unsuccessfully trying to have her ruled incompetent by the court so they can get the cash. When that doesn't work, she invites all these jerks to her home for a mysterious midnight meeting--at which point she says she insists they all stay a week so she can figure out which ones should inherit the estate. But, soon after they arrive, bodies start to pile up. So, by the end, it's up to this wacky old lady to work out the solution to the murders--and WOW is her plan nutty! While this film is low-budget and occasionally the writing and acting are not great, the overall picture is actually very good. Why? Because it's so darn irreverent in its sensibilities. I mentioned the one "Cat and Canary" comment above, but I also like the ways the film made fun of things such as the Hays Office, Ferdinand the Bull (from the Munro Leaf book) as well as Philo Vance and other film detectives. Well worth seeing--I almost gave this one a 7.Ferdinand Philo Christopher Hays

jonfrum2000 This is a comedy using the murder mystery genre as background. The main characters are a bit stiff - especially considering this was made in 1941 - but it's not a bad hour spent. The story revolves around old aunt Cassie, whose odd 'uh-heh' laugh is closer to caricature than character-defining. The newspaper columnist who serves as the detective in this film, is played by Wallace Ford. He and his secretary (?) and photographer play their stereotypical roles no better than the stereotypes you'd expect. The sheriff - presumably from New York somewhere, as that's where the court case was heard - sounds more like an Okie than an upstate New Yorker, and follows his own stereotype of the hayseed lawman, accent included. Of course, he's a buffoon as well, asking the newspaper columnist for advice at every turn.So we know the flaws. Still, this was a B movie, intended as filler, and that's how we should judge it. There's nothing about it that made me want to hit the stop button - unlike some stinkers - and for fans of 1930s mysteries, it's an acceptable detour into comedy. Not laugh out loud comedy, but light amusement. It's out of copyright, and I found it on a 5 CD collection Mystery and Murder: 25 Crime Classics at my library. So it was worth every penny I paid for it.

Hitchcoc This is a formula piece. It's been done a hundred times. The greed of the relatives causes them to try to get the old lady committed. Their motives are so obvious that any chance they had goes down the tube within minutes. Now they're in over their heads and have to use their resources to survive. Meanwhile, the red herrings start swimming upstream. I should have hated it, but the crazy overacting and general being of the film are rather pleasant in a maniacal sort of way. The conclusion is satisfying and justice is done. The one drawback is that the bad guys are so pathetic and incompetent that they don't pose much of a threat.