After Mel Brooks' The 12 Chairs....

Another of my recent movie watches was the 1937 version of The 13th Chair. The movie is a remake of a 1929 movie, and the two are available together on DVD.

There's been a murder in Calcutta in the days of British India, and London has sent out Scotland Yard detective Inspector Marney (Lewis Stone) to investigate and see if he can find out who the murderer is. The house where the murder occurred has been kept locked, but when Marney goes into the house, he finds a man waiting for him, one John Wales (Henry Daniell). Apparently this man was a friend of the dead man, but his presence at the crime scene makes him an obvious suspect.

Wales knows who's who among the British in Calcutta, which Marney doesn't, so Wales comes up with a daft plan to find who the killer is. He'll invite a whole bunch of people together for a séance; some of them are the prime suspects while others are just friends along for the ride so that the suspects don't realize until it's too late to back out what the séance is all about. The séance is to be conducted by Madame La Grange (Dame May Whitty), who mostly does séances for entertainment but insists that she really does have the power of a medium to see into the next world.

If you've watched enough 1930s movies, you'll probably recognizes some of the participants in the séance, notably Elissa Landi and Madge Evans. Anyhow, Mme. La Grange insists on having the séance held in the dark, with all of the participants holding hands. Somebody suspects this means La Grange herself might be up to no good, so she agrees to be tied to her chair so as to avoid suspicion. But we still know something is going to happen at the séance....

That something is one of the participants getting bumped off, stabbed in the back, although where's the murder weapon. And why is everybody still holding hands? The only way to solve the second murder is to come up with something even more daft, which is a second séance, which does work with one of the oldest tricks in the book. Not that you didn't expect the detective to solve the case, this being a Code-era movie.

The 13th Chair is a perfect example of a 1930s programmer, this one from MGM. It runs a whopping 66 minutes, but has a couple of higher-tier stars in Stone and Whitty. It's extremely competently made and for the most part entertains, although if you really want it's not that difficult to poke holes in the mystery. So while it's nothing that will be long remembered, it's certainly another worthwhile watch.