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Wayne
Murder Case:
Whiny Nephews and the Actors Who Play Them
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This is a pretty bad movie. I am not going to lie to you. It is slow, uninvolving and
nonsensical. Thank god it’s only
sixty minutes long. Silas Wayne is a bitter old fart
who despises all of his living relatives. The feeling is mutual as they don’t like him much
either. So what does he do? He invites them over for a formal
reading of his will for the sole
purpose of pissing everyone off.
Among his distasteful relatives
are the scheming Boullers, his
house servant Miss Sheen, Dr. Bailey, and his nephews Claude and Robert. Robert, played by our favorite and
the reason for this website, is accompanied by his really hot girlfriend, Gloria. So Silas brags about his will and how he despises everyone
but before he can finish signing the will he keels over. Everyone crowds around him to discover that
he’s been stabbed. Which is weird because he totally
wasn’t stabbed when he fell over.
This of course means that one of the crowdees is the murderer. The lame cops on duty call for Detective-Sergeant Mitchell which I’m fairly sure is
not a real title but whatever. Meanwhile, spunky girl reporter “Nosey” Toodles (I swear to god I am
not making up her name) sneaks into the house with the worst disguise ever. She manages to show up for the most boring interrogation scene in
the history of cinema. It turns
out everyone has a motive for killing Silas so the Detective is back to
square one. Robert’s for me is
the most interesting not just because Dwight’s the actor, but because it
makes Uncle Silas into an even bigger dick than imagined. Detective-Sergeant Mitchell reads
Robert and Gloria the will
stating that Gloria would get the entire estate as long as she didn’t marry
Robert. Robert himself would get
just one dollar. Think about it
for a second. Uncle Silas could
be implying many things with this.
He could think that Gloria’s a gold digger who will dump her boyfriend
at the first sign of money. Or
he could hate his nephew that much that he would try to ruin a young man’s
chance at happiness. Or Silas
could be a jealous old fart that Robert had a lovely girl like Gloria and was
determined to destroy them.
Whatever the motive one thing is clear, Silas is a dick. Everyone goes to sleep for the
night and a mysterious hooded
figure crawls out of the woodwork to kill people. And when he’s not killing people he’s
harassing Jeff. Jeff is the obnoxious stereotypical
black manservant played with no dignity by a guy called “Snowflake.” To be fair, this was the 1930s and
Snowflake was probably trying to make a living. The opportunities for African-American actors were
probably close to nonexistent.
This is why I can’t get mad at Snowflake but I sure as hell can get
mad at the writer for sticking the character into bad minstrel routines. I wish to discuss some of what
bothers me about the Jeff scenes but I’ll put those off until the end of the
review so those sensitive viewers can skip it. So back to our regularly scheduled review. So it turns out that nephew
Claude has been stealing
from his uncle for many years and that in Silas’s will he included evidence
of this wrongdoing. Now that
there’s been a murder, Claude tries to run to keep from being
arrested. The hooded man kills
him in a scene too dark to screencap.
Now there’s another dead body
despite the fact that cops are crawling all over the place. Or maybe they’re too busy stealing food from the
kitchen. Worst cops ever. The body is discovered by our
intrepid reporter; who proceeds to do what she does for most of the movie scream. After this brutal killing suspicion is cast on Stephen
Bouller since he knows how to tie the knot that was around Claude’s
neck. Everyone goes to sleep
again, ‘cause I know I’d be comfortable sleeping in a house with a murderer
on the loose. The next almost
victim is Gloria who has a knife
thrown at her. Thankfully the
villain has bad aim or one of the only likeable people in the movie would be
dead. The world’s worst cops and the
Detective give chase and capture the hooded man. Well, it turns out there were two murderers. One was Stephen and the other was the
doctor. Turns out that Silas had
a secret wife and a secret son, his
housekeeper and his doctor.
The doctor murdered Silas while Stephen murdered Claude. Or something. It’s hard to remember because the
movie is that bad. The housekeeper turns off the
lights just like in Dead Men Walk allowing the doctor to escape. There’s a wrestling match on top of the roof
and the doctor leaps on some electric
lines. He fries. The reporter and the detective make out. The End. To be fair I only paid about six dollars
for this movie but it just didn’t entertain me the same way that Vampire
Bat or Crime of Dr. Crespi did. But I did find the box cover hilarious as Dwight Frye’s
name is the most prominent one but he’s really only a minor character. But seriously, no one has heard of
anyone else in this movie. Silas Calls the Cops
Now here’s the other rant if you
want to skip it starting. . . .now. I guess the one thing I can say
about this movie is it made me question why I find the Marx Brothers ethnic
humor funny but the scenes where Jeff gets words confused just pisses me
off. I came to a conclusion
which I think makes some sense.
Chico Marx is a con artist.
Everything about him is a con, especially his supposed “Italian”
identity. There’s even a line
about in Animal Crackers: “How
did you get to be Roscoe W. Chandler?”
“Say, how did you get to be an Italian?” When Chico engages in wordplay it
is always to pull the wool over someone’s eyes or to agitate them, usually
Groucho. Chico is never a victim
and his “foolishness” feels like a put-on. As a (fake) immigrant, Chico is always outside of society
ready to poke and prod at the cracks.
Jeff has no such luxury. Jeff is a product of his society and lacks
the ability to break free. When
he confuses the words “night” and “knight” it comes across as “look at the
stupid black man” rather than “he’s making fun of Claude.” Jeff is also the only member of the
household who sees the hooded man and no one else believes him. He is spoken to in a condescending
manner even though he speaks the truth.
He is the one character who recognizes the danger of staying in the
house and wishes to leave. The
other characters treat this behavior as cowardice or a case of
hysterics. The writer treats it
like a joke. Chico, as goofy as he is, will
always triumph in the end. Jeff,
on the other hand, will always get stuck holding the ghost. Or running from him as the case may
be. That concludes the serious
discussion so I leave you now with links to other cool Dwight Frye
films. Back to Dwight
Frye Back to Frankenstein Films Back to Something
to Sing About Back to Dead
Men Walk Back to The
Vampire Bat On to The
Crime of Dr. Crespi Send
feedback to joeanne_b@hotmail.com Wayne Murder Case is distributed by Alpha
Video. No infringement of copyright is intended or inferred. No money ever has or ever will
exchange hand. All screencaps and
snarkage made by me. |
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