That was an excellent one.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good concept, poorly executed.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

A Ginger Rogers movie from 1932 that played well into the 1940's on her name alone.The story concerns the deaths thirteen years after a dinner party where the host died and the 13th guest never showed up. The mystery concerns attempts of persons to unlock the mystery of the will read at that fateful dinner party.The movie is old time and not bad. The dialog is mostly well done and the acting and direction is more realistic then one would expect from an independent production. Interestingly two of the characters are all but named as gay lovers, something that I find incredible simply because I've never seen this listed in a gay friendly histories of Hollywood and Hollywood films.(Then Again I haven't really looked) I liked it I didn't love it. Its not a bad time passer but its not something you want to search out, but its not something to turn off if you see it late at night.Frankly even though its an average thriller I have no doubt that it would have disappeared had Ginger not been it.

Lovely young Ginger Rogers arrives at her long ago abandoned family manor on her twenty-first birthday to meet her lawyer so that she can find out about her inheritance. She finds out about foul play and murder instead! Obviously, someone in her family is trying to do away with her. But just who's trying to do it? Everyone is a suspect, including Rogers herself. Lyle Talbot is the private investigator who rounds up the entire family and tries to sort things out. J. Farrell MacDonald is the police sergeant who is confounded by it all. Paul Hurst is his nitwit sidekick. Everyone has some good lines and often the comebacks are hilarious. There's a part near the end of the film where Hurst's shoes are on the wrong feet, which is an absolute howl if you understand the reason why. Nice, creepy looking house is the perfect setting for pretty Rogers to be menaced in. There's plenty of cobwebs to contrast with Miss Rogers' who looks very cute in her costumes. Low-budget, but doesn't really seem to be because one gets involved in the puzzling mystery. You may have to see "The Thirteenth Guest" twice to fully understand it. It is a very intricate murder mystery which ultimately does make sense.

Spoilers herein.I've been slogging through many 1930's film mysteries. Dozens of them, and this is one of the most interesting. I've seen it three times now and still can't figure it all out. That's a good sign.It starts simple enough, and follows a standard pattern established over decades in radio mysteries: a raffish detective, incompetent comic police, beautiful girls, society people. There's a puzzle, hidden passages and a villain dressed in a black silk hood and gown. That villain has an evil laugh inherited from radio conventions.Things chug along predictably until the end which has a pretty interesting twist. The twist is on the notion of twist itself as the bad guy is someone you suspect and for the reason you suspect. The twist is that there are two conspiracies working at cross-purposes. So even though the solution itself is mundane, the next to the last step toward the solution is pretty darn clever.Oh, and a very young and pretty Ginger Rogers is the girl.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

This is one of Roger's & Talbot's earliest film and, by far the best of the "13th Guest" films" (several remakes were done).At a dinner party many years ago, 13 people were invited, but only 12 showed up. The host died at the table, and the house was closed up for many, many years. Then, the bodies of the people who attended that dinner party started turning up in that abandoned house, sitting in the same chairs they occupied so long ago.It turns out they are being murdered by a black-cloaked figure who just MIGHT have been one of dinner guests. He peers out thru a secret viewing hole, and cackles insanely after he murders someone.A very, very eerie film!