This is an enjoyable light murder mystery, but I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't recently seen BLIND ADVENTURE, made the year before by Ernest B. Schoedsack for RKO. The plot elements, as I recall, are strikingly similar: a foggy London night, the hero accidentally going into a house and finding a body, which is then missing when he comes back with help; a young girl's relative disappearing, and a foreign ambassador of some sort who seems legit but is a bad guy; constant breaking into the house in question; all the action occurring in one evening; and the hero and the girl-in-distress an item by the evening's end. And, in both instances, comedy relief that actually adds to the film! Roland Young was very pleasing in BLIND ADVENTURE, but no one can match Butterworth at his best, which he is here. Once again, one feels that he had to have written many of his lines. Here, he's married that very day to Una Merkel, who affectionately calls him "Mousey." Colman: "Never leave your wife." Butterworth: "I'll speak to her about it." When Drummond finds adventure, he calls up Butterworth and asks him to tag along, without a care that it's Butterworth's wedding night. Butterworth isn't really an innocent here, he knows what he's missing out on. In response to one of these calls, he says, "we've reached sort of a critical moment." Robert Armstrong in BLIND ADVENTURE seems a more real, more interesting character. Here, both the script and Colman play it as a not-to-be-taken-seriously, boy's-own adventure, a tacit acknowledgment that this is just another caper in a series. One nice addition here is that the inevitable policeman who doesn't believe there's a problem is C. Aubrey Smith. You're on his side, really. Why doesn't this boy scout let him get some sleep?
Apparently Butterworth was an off-screen drinking buddy of such literary wits as Robert Benchley and Corey Ford. Note that Benchley wrote "additional dialogue" for BLIND ADVENTURE, presumably for Young's Butterworth-like character.
Apparently Butterworth was an off-screen drinking buddy of such literary wits as Robert Benchley and Corey Ford. Note that Benchley wrote "additional dialogue" for BLIND ADVENTURE, presumably for Young's Butterworth-like character.