People are voting emotionally.

just watch it!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936) ** (out of 4) Fast paced Warner mystery has Dr. Harrigan being murdered in a hospital right before he's about to do surgery on a man who has also disappeared. Dr. Lambert (Ricardo Cortez) and Nurse Keating (Kay Linaker) decide to do some investigating on their own and realize that just about everyone in the hospital is a suspect and that Harrigan was working on a new form of anesthetic. THE MURDER OF DR. HARRIGAN isn't the best murder-mystery out there from Warner but even with all its flaws it's still worth watching thanks in large part to the nice cast of characters. Cortez is always hit and miss among film buffs but I thought he was rather charming here. The actor certainly didn't have to over extend himself but he did enough to at least keep you entertained in his character. Linaker, just signed off of Broadway, is actually very good in her part but sadly the screenplay gives her very little to work with. Character actor Joseph Crehan does a fine job at the main detective investigating the case and we also get fine support from Robert Strange, Phillip Reed and Anita Kerry. Then there's Mary Astor who according to the trivia section of IMDb turned down the lead part and to punish her the studio gave her a supporting bit. The role is certainly below her talents but she's good in the part and certainly helps make the film better. With that said, the plot here just isn't interesting enough to really pull you in and I'd argue that the direction isn't up to par either. Still, fans of the cast members will still want to check it out.

"The Murder of Dr. Harrigan" is a glorious example of the sort of low-cost quickies Hollywood churned out in the 30s to satisfy the double feature pipeline. It is almost entirely set in what has to be the sloppiest hospital in America. Here, a doctor reschedules an operation for midnight without bothering to assemble a surgical team. Nurses haphazardly wander in and out of patients' rooms. And when the only elevator in the place stops running, nobody's much concerned until it starts up again -- and a dead body turns up inside. For comedy relief, the orderlies stomach pump the wrong patient. Oh, those wacky hospital staffers! The plot centers on an eccentric millionaire who arranges for a doctor who hates his guts to perform a delicate operation on him, using a new anesthetic that's better than ether; it puts patients out for three days so they can heal painlessly. Somewhere in this melange of mayhem and malpractice, there's Ricardo Cortez trying to save the nurse he loves from being charged with murder by the usual myopic cop. But the mystery zips along and as a throwback to a bygone era, it's at least entertaining. And for trivia buffs, there's Mary Astor in a relatively small, thankless role, purportedly her punishment for bucking the studio system.

"The Murder of Dr. Harrigan" is a short film in the Crime Club series, based on a story by Mignon G. Eberhart. Eberhart was a prolific mystery novelist, but I think this story made better reading than it did a film. This film stars Ricardo Cortez, Kay Linkater, John Eldredge, and Mary Astor.The plot concerns a formula for a new anesthetic - I never did get the name - it sounded like Slaypen - and a Dr. Melady lays claim as the primary owner, though others, like Dr. Harrigan, had helped to develop it. Melady wants Harrigan to operate on him and use the Slaypen, However, Harrigan is murdered, and Dr. Melady disappears.Most of the film revolves around the hospital elevator. For awhile, I couldn't figure out why the doctors and nurses kept manually closing the doors, and then I realized that although the elevator was automatic, apparently closing the doors was not yet automatic in 1936. Rather than use the elevator operator with that big wheel often seen in department stores years ago, they were just pulling the doors shut.Even coming in at just over an hour, this movie seems long because it's so talky, and most of the action is described rather than seen, The star, Ricardo Cortez, lays out the whole solution to the murder to the detective in charge at the end - but we didn't see much of it.The most entertaining things about this film are the old things: the elevator doors, the nurses' uniforms and caps, the rotary phones. As far as the acting, Cortez is an amiable presence, and Astor is very good. Mary Treen, a very familiar television face, has a small but showy role.

I never heard of this movie before I saw it on TCM although I am a big fan of Mary Astor and know the body of her work. It is a "B" murder plot with an surprise killer. The premise is about a totally horrible millionaire Peter Melady, self-proclaimed developer of a new wonder anesthetic, around whose discovery there is a lot of controversy. It appears that he was not the sole developer of this drug but that becomes a viable motive for murder. As an experiment to prove the drug's value, he wants to undergo surgery , using this drug but not to be operated on by his own doctor, Doctor Coate, but by the glib Dr. Leo Harrigan, Melady's longtime mutual adversary. Again, they hate each other and are connected by this new drug.Police are called when the murdered body of Harrigan is found in an elevator, and Melady, last seen being wheeled on a gurney to surgery by Harrigan, has disappeared. There are sub plots about Dr. Harrigan's society wife (who is in the hospital for a broken arm). Hello! this was obviously the days before same day surgery and medical insurance companies calling the shots. Oh , and Melady's daughter is also "convienently" another patient in there for "sunburn". Dr Harrigan's wife has a gigolo boyfriend who is visiting her even though her husband is chief of surgery there. This guy, who looks like a poor imitation of Jack la Rue ,is played by Bill Elliott (billed as Gordon Elliott ) who went on to become one of my favorite cowboys "Wild Bill Elliott" . Mary Astor has a supporting role in this movie which is a surprise considering when it was made. The rest of the cast includes Philip Reed as a young intern (I always thought of him as the poor man's Tyrone Power- he had that look) and Ricardo Cortez as the doctor who figures out the crime. Somebody has to explain to l me what anybody ever saw in Ricardo Cortez. He was born in Austria, so the studio, jumping on the bandwagon of the Latin lover craze begun by Valentino, changed his name, place of birth to Spain and put him in films. They really should have given him acting lessons. He was wooden and had no range as an actor. There are scenes in this movie where he looks taken with himself! Anyway , there is a surprise killerand some revelation about Mary Astor's character. I recommend it for film buffs.