I love this movie so much

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Fast-moving mix of comedic nonsense and creepy thick-ear, of the sort popular at the time. Seems everybody's trying to find the corpse of gangster Wells and hold onto it. Competing reporters Willis (gargan) and Gallagher (Savage) are trying to out-scoop one another, that is, when not romancing. At the same time, bad guy Jelke (Zucco) wants to hide the body to cover for his stolen jewels, while the cops are trying to figure things out and poor Miggs just wants some sleep. Complicated? Yes, but in an entertaining, if crowded, programmer style. It's not a whodunit, rather we wait to see how all the conflicting interests will play out.Apparently Gorcey's on leave from the East Side Kids, while furnishing his impudent brand of fractured English. Now if he can just figure out how to be a cool guy and light a cigarette. The wax museum setting is inventive, but someone should tell director Thomas that wax figures are not limber. Note too how much of the proceedings are filmed in half-light, probably to cover for the budget sets. For fans of statuesque Ann Savage, she shows a different side here from her definitive Detour (1945) spider woman. Happily, she also shows a lot of shapely leg near the end.Overall, it's a fairly nifty little programmer with a brisk pace and a number of 40's familiar faces.

Funny how you don't have wax museum pictures anymore. They seemed to be a staple product back in the day, with pictures like 1933's "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and 1940's "Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum". One might consider 2005's "House of Wax", but that doesn't count because Paris Hilton was in it. "Midnight Manhunt" doesn't have 'wax' in the title, but it gets some mileage out of the theme with the presence of The Last Gangster Wax Museum. I had to scratch my head over that actually, as I couldn't figure out what the reference was supposed to represent. Probably not important.At the center of the story is a corpse, compliments of George Zucco, who murders a fellow criminal to procure a quarter million dollars worth of stolen diamonds. He could have left well enough alone, but for some reason decided he needed to get rid of the body. (It's explained later on for anyone willing to buy it, but I don't have that kind of dough.) This could have been your standard Forties crime programmer, but the presence of Leo Gorcey added an offbeat comic element to it. Gorcey uses a line about having 'optical delusions' that I'm sure I heard in one of his Bowery Boys flicks, but he outdoes himself with this one - "You are now gazin' on the nucleus of a neurotic". Seems he was mixing up his movie genres.The picture's real focus though is on reporter Sue Gallagher (Ann Savage) and her on and off romantic rival Pete Willis (William Gargan). Gallagher discovers the body of mobster Joe Wells on the museum staircase, and figures to cash in on a scoop and a five thousand dollar payoff for proving Wells' whereabouts, dead or alive. It was curious to me how Zucco's character Jelke followed a trail of blood spots from Wells' apartment to the wax museum and the hot shot police force couldn't have done the same. Zucco seemed just a bit too refined to get involved with murder and mayhem here, but all that changed when he used the butt of his gun to knock out Miss Gallagher. I had to replay that scene twice, thinking I had witnessed an optical delusion.

After Scared Stiff, Ann Savage played the feminine lead in Midnight Manhunt, in which she is relentlessly put down by charmless William Gargan – not one of my favorite leading men by a long chalk. David Lang's script is one of those affairs in which a collection of not overbright characters get themselves involved with murder and missing jewels on the flimsiest of pretexts. As a time filler, this little "B" is overladen with dialogue but still plays with reasonable celerity, thanks more to the sterling efforts of an A-1 support cast led by Leo Gorcey and Charles Halton than to any input from dull, relentlessly plodding, over-emphatic direction from co-producer William C. Thomas (of the Scared Stiff Two-Dollar Bills).

Diamond-thieving gangster Joe Wells winds up dead in a gangster wax museum where the jokers who run it not only recognize him but also happen to be pals with a couple of rival crime reporters. The reporters want the scoop. The cops want the corpse. And the old man just wants to go home because he's "so tired." Leo Gorcey provides a bit of comic relief with malapropisms and a troublesome cigar. The reporters cooperate and betray each other as it becomes convenient, regardless of how many laws they're breaking or how much danger they're in.The acting is generally good, not great, but the direction is very stagy. With so few sets and so little camera movement, this could easily be a stage play. It's the kind of movie where people tell each other to stop beating their gums and to go soak their heads, offer each other stiff drinks, and light a lot of cigarettes.The killer's explanation of why he hasn't just fled is ridiculous. And the shenanigans with the corpse are just bizarre.