Another of the programming themes TCM did a day of a while back was "old dark house" movies from the 1930s, movies in which a bunch of people gather at a house looking for... something, usually with some danger afoot as well. One of the movies I hadn't heard of before was Before Dawn, and since it sounded interesting, I decided to record it.
The movie starts off nowhere near the house, but in Vienna. In a hospital, a Dr. Cornelius (Warner Oland) approaches a nurse, asking about an American patient who is dying. Cornelius talks to the patient, who reveals that 15 years ago back in the States, he robbed a bank and stashed the proceeds from the robbery -- a cool one million dollars, which was a lot back in the early 1930s -- in a house somewhere, mentioning where the house is but not where in the house the money is. The man then dies, and it's not illogical to assume that Dr. Cornelius is going to show up again later in the movie since he's played by someone near the top of the cast list.
We then cut to the house in question, where two old women are living. One of them is Mrs. Marble (Jane Darwell), who hears about the man's death, and is thrilled because it means that she can get the money now after having waited for 15 years for the man to die. The other woman, Mattie, isn't so sanguine about the idea of getting the money, as though it's caused so much disaster for everybody involved with the money that she'd just like to clean her hands of it. Sure enough, Marble climbs the stairs and sees the ghost of the American who stole the money. She, frightened, falls down the stairs to her death.
We then cut again to a clairvoyant named Patricia (Dorothy Wilson), who is giving a reading to one Dwight Wilson (Stuart Erwin). Wilson is actually an undercover police detective, and his job is to find phony psychics who prey on the emotionally needy and desperate, being pushed into it by her father Horace (Dudley Digges). Wilson gives her a question with no right answer, and before she can tell him this he arrests her and her father.
Patricia, upon being taken to the police station, protests that she wasn't given a chance to tell Dwight he'd asked a trick question. And then in a shocker, she starts giving other information that implies she might be a real no-fooling psychic, and not like all the others who are of course phonies. The cops thinking that she might possibly be useful, bring her and her father to the house where the money may or may not be hidden. Wilson comes along, since he's a detective and it's his job to retrive the money and return it to its proper owners. Also coming, direct from Europe, is Dr. Cornelius.
Before Dawn is little more than a B movie, although to be fair most of the "old dark house" movies were never conceived as prestige movies. However, it's more than entertaining enough. The story is of course nonsense, but when has a nonsense story stopped a movie from being entertaining? Especially in the pre-Code days when talking pictures were realatively new, there were a lot of off-the-wall plots as studios tried all sorts of different things to see what might or might not work. Before Dawn works more than it doesn't, and is definitely worth a watch.
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