This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Oh, where to even start with this sad B movie.An ambitious young reporter who wants to get married and provide for his wife gets caught in a downpour with his fiancée. They duck into an inn. Hearing noise, they find someone in the next room dead, as well as the guy who let them in. The killer was a guy looking for money, and he had a woman with him -- they find the money, but she leaves her purse behind with her name and address inside.The reporter sets himself up as the murderer, but gives his fiancée the purse to keep to prove his innocence. He calls in the murder anonymously and then sends reports in of how it feels to be hiding and on the run from the cops.Eric Linden plays the idiot reporter who apparently never heard of hard work rather than schemes, and Dorothy Jordan, who is in for a life of misery if she marries this guy, is his fiancée.This was Bruce Cabot's first credited film, and soon after, he saved Fay Wray from King Kong.The film will remind some of the Fritz Lang film, "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," which I happen to love. It will remind you of it, and then, hopefully, you will forget the comparison since there really isn't one.

Let's see if I have this right. A newspaper reporter and his girl friend are caught in a downpour. Their car is stuck in the mud so they stagger off to the nearest hostelry where they stumble on a murder. Most people would call the cops. But not our plucky newsman. He plants clues implicating himself as the killer so that he can cover the story from a unique angle. Of course, he has something that will prove his innocence. And of course...duh!!!!...that item mysteriously vanishes. Which means unless a miracle occurs, he's going to the chair. Okay, it was 1932 and movies were just learning to talk. But this has to be one of the dumbest ideas for a thriller, even for those early days. On the other hand, idiotic as it is, it's curiously entertaining.

The only reason I watched this one was to catch a glimpse of ERIC LINDEN, the man who played the amputee soldier in a devastating hospital scene from GONE WITH THE WIND where Dr. Meade gives the order to amputate. I had never seen him in a starring role.Indeed, here he looks nothing like the man in the GWTW epic--he's clean-shaven, youthful looking in a boyish sort of way that makes it hard to see how he could have played the amputee victim of war in that Selznick film classic. The make-up was a big help.The plot has a man framing himself for murder and then unable to prove that he didn't commit the crime when the time comes for him to produce the evidence that got away when his girlfriend's pocketbook was stolen by the real culprit--BRUCE CABOT.By now, this plot has been used many times and it has been done to better effect by directors like Fritz Lang, who used it in BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. Here, the story is weakened by some stereotyped newspaper types (particularly ROSCOE KARNS as the fast-talking editor), and some less than stellar supporting role performances.DOROTHY JORDAN is so-so as the femme lead and Linden is merely adequate in the role of the unwise reporter who gets caught up in circumstances beyond his control. Nothing special, but it holds the attention for its brief running time.

A reporter on the copy desk tries to get a chance to break a big story he has a lead on. When he tries to run it down he ends up bursting in on the girlfriend of the publisher of the paper as she's bathing. Deciding to relax with his girlfriend after a trying day he ends up stuck in the rain in his car with its top down. Getting a room at a roadhouse the couple thinks they hear a shot. Going to investigate they find two dead bodies and two people rifling through a desk who tell them "they know and saw nothing" before they climb out a window. Our hero sensing a big scoop then tries to bend the crime to his advantage and sets himself up for the murder so that he can write about it. The problem comes when he's unable to prove his innocence when he needs to.This early talkie is an okay, if clichéd, little film once it gets going. The early scenes in the newsroom seem to be steals from the Front Page and its over lapping dialog in a mad attempt to exploit the then novelty of sound film. Once the murders occur and the plot is in motion things are enjoyable even if we've seen it all before.The problem with this film is that its plot has been done countless times before and since. You know whats going to happen the question is do you care enough to see how they do it this time. Complicating matters is the acting which is often stilted and seemingly out of date and artificial. The behavior of the City editor at the opening is very unnatural. Coupling the odd acting styles with what now seems to be very silly dialog makes matters worse. I wasn't sure if I was laughing at or with the film. There are a few times when all of the problems in plot,acting and dialog come together to produce some big "they didn't mean that" sort of laughs.If you like old mysteries and don't mind one thats a bit past its freshness date I'd give it a try. If you don't want your movies stilted I'd stay away.