Welcome to the Denham Sanity Trial, where the relatives of eccentric Aunt Cassie are hoping the judge will have her committed so that they can get their hands on her $3m estate and house in the mountains... At least, that's the plan - and that's the motive - for a MURDER BY INVITATION!
I'm a little wary of Wallace Ford. I love The Rogues Tavern but its leading man is absolutely not the best thing about it. Here he is again, as a journalist who smarms his way into the middle of a murder investigation. And, just like in Tavern, it's one of his sidekicks doing the bulk of the detective work... Not that I'm complaining - I'd rather spend time with the sidekick, after all. But does that save the film? I'm afraid I'm going to have to say no. This 1941 flick starts out funny, with enough zingers peppering the aforementioned court case I expected Hepburn and Tracy to pop up, but once we arrive at the Old Dark Greylock House itself, the enjoyment drains away like it's controlled by some kind of faulty fun faucet. And who needs one of those?
Once it's been established that Aunt Cassie (an impish Sarah Padden) is indeed playing with a full set of marbles - in the eyes of the court, at least - her greedy relatives find themselves summoned to Greylock for a midnight meeting. None are keen to make the trip - in fact, several suspect the giggly old bat has murder in mind - but being a no-show means being cut out of her will for definite, so they grudgingly head up into the hills.
And there we have it. The stage is set for lashings of backwoods backbiting, as Cassie descends the staircase on the stroke of twelve, announcing she's going to study them all for a while and leave her money to "the worthiest of an unworthy lot". It's only a matter of time (1am in the library, to be exact) before one of the gang turns up dead, and the backstabbing descends into actual stabbing. Enter gossip columnist Wallace Ford (he's not even a news reporter) to put an end to the murders, accompanied by his secretary (Marian Marsh), who gets all the funniest lines, and crime scene photographer (Herbert Vigran), who does all the dog work. (Remind me why Ford is in this again?)
In an annoying touch, while the killer is likely to be a member of the family (i.e. someone named in the will), Ford spends most of the time pompously suspecting the servants. There's talk, talk, talk as it emerges that literally everyone has an alibi but, eventually, a secret passage is discovered, leading to an amusing bargain between Aunt Cassie and another character that provides some much-needed relief from all the interrogating.
Released in the wake of 1939's The Cat and the Canary (which is even name-dropped at one point), Murder by Invitation tries to emulate that film's self-awareness by having Ford spout things like, "This has all the elements of a swell murder mystery!"... Only this time it's not, and the constant reminders don't help. What I will say, however, is that the whodunit angle actually plays out fairly; it's just a shame it's not delivered in a very entertaining way. I rolled a sympathetic eye when Mike the mechanic declared: "If these murders don't stop, I'm never going to get this car greased!"
Enjoy the lively opening credits, which juggle the story's motifs (eyes, clocks and flames) with James Bondian glee, but don't expect too much else from this sub-par effort, which really should have brought more to the table. This ain't the Thirties anymore, Monogram!
RATING: 🕸
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