Very Cool!!!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Grade-D mystery programmer in underdressed sets. The director, Otis Garrett, tries to keep it running with some fast screen wipes, but it still feels much longer than its 68 minutes. Preston Foster tries to carry it almost single-handedly; it's hard to tell most of the supporting characters apart, because they look the same, they dress the same and they talk the same. *1/2 out of 4.

1938's "The Lady in the Morgue" was the third Crime Club from Universal, and the second to feature Preston Foster as Detective Bill Crane, with Frank Jenks as his sidekick Doc Williams. An attractive blonde suicide disappears from the morgue, with Crane, on assignment to identify the missing corpse, under suspicion for the murder of the morgue attendant; meanwhile, Chauncey Courtland ('Wild Bill' Elliott) is searching for his missing sister, and two different gangsters are putting the squeeze on Crane, each one hoping his girl isn't the missing blonde. Considering all the subplots going on, things wrap up nicely, moving at a fast clip, with witty wisecracks galore, particularly when Crane is told to go down to the morgue: "think they'll take me?" Guaranteed to keep one guessing, and easily the best of the 3 Crane titles (preceded by "The Westland Case," followed by "The Last Warning"). The next Crime Club would be "Danger on the Air."

During the second half of the 1930s, Jonathan Latimer wrote five screwball mysteries featuring Chicago private eye Bill Crane. When not boozing or snoozing, his highest priorities, he cleverly unraveled complicated crimes.Universal "crime club" filmed three of the books. While all three had different directors, all three starred Preston Foster as Bill Crane and Frank Jenks as Doc Williams, his assistant. The Lady in the Morgue (1938), based on Latimer's similarly titled 1936 novel, was directed by Otis Garrett. It is the second, and best, of these films. The other two are The Westland Case (1937) and The Last Warning (1938).There are four mysteries in The Lady in the Morgue. Who was that young blonde found hanging in the Darlow Hotel? Was she Edna Brown, Agnes Christy, Katherine Courtland, Kay Renshaw, Alice Ross, Mrs. Sam Taylor, or Arlene Vincent -- or perhaps even someone else? Was she a suicide, or possibly a murder victim? Who purloined her corpse from the morgue? And where did they hide it? Colonel Black, owner of a Chicago detective agency, directs Crane and Williams to discretely find out if the girl was Katherine Courtland. (Though she is missing, her wealthy family wants no scandal.) Naturally, discretion doesn't work out and Crane ends up wanted by the police for body snatching and murder, targeted by rival gangsters, double-crossed by his boss, and condemned by local papers.Otis Garrett, who directed The Lady in the Morgue, was a rising star who tragically died just three years later. This may be his best film, containing, as it does, strong mysteries, snappy dialog, fast pacing, snazzy cutting, and many clever bits – some of which reappear several times. Having previously edited The Westland Case, Garrett was quite familiar with the Crane series, and, perhaps because of that, he successfully repaired one of the first film's major weaknesses: Foster and Jenks' over the top performances. In addition, he elicited strong supporting performances from Bill Elliot (as Katherine Courtland's brother), Thomas E. Jackson (as Police Lieutenant Strom), Don Brodie (as Crane's taxi driver), and Bryan Foulger (as the morgue attendant). (Indeed, soon afterward "Wild" Bill Elliot became a "B" western star.) The movie also contains, however, one extremely uncomfortable scene. Having bribed the Black elevator man to get into the dead woman's room, Crane tests his murder theory by casually stringing up the man, without even so much as an explanation. The detective expects the clothes hook will break as soon as the man begins to struggle. It does and Crane has been standing by in case he's wrong. Still, as insight into the racial attitudes of the era, it is horrifying.Finally, there is a climactic graveyard scene which bothers me, but which I cannot explain, not having read Latimer's novels. It basically repeats another scene from a prior movie, Hi, Nellie! (1934). To wit: both scenes take place at night, both involve disinterring bodies for identity checks, both involve prior removals, and both involve the bodies' new locations being detected in the same way. Is this coincidence, or plagiarism? And if it is plagiarism, then who's responsible? Could it be the author, the screen writer, or possibly even the director? I just don't know the answers. Do any of you, by any chance?

Part of the Crime Club series, and based on an original by Jonathan Latimer, this nifty little mystery is often cited as a model of 30s B-movie adeptness. It was directed by the unjustly forgotten Otis Garrett (who died young), a former editor who uses flash-pan edits and other visual tricks to maintain a breakneck pace -- so fast that it's pretty difficult to follow the complex plot. Although a bit too reliant on dialog scenes, there are enough effective wisecracks, bizarre demimonde characters (shifty undertakers, dour taxi drivers, carefree taxi dancers) and risqué asides (apparently, the production code enforcers often neglected these low budgeters) to raise the quality well above the norm. One side benefit is an appearance by a young Barbara Pepper, sassy and sardonic as ever, but surprisingly lithe and seductive. Soon-to-be-famous Stanley Cortez provided the cinematography.