Review of The Casino Murder Case

Leave it to MGM to make an "A" production out of a genre that most other studios at the time treated as "B" stuff. A complicated mystery that keeps you in the dark but plays fair with the attentive viewer, an above-average cast (Isabel Jewell is especially memorable), and some clever jabs at the "long-winded" speech patterns of Vance himself make this one of the best films featuring this fictional detective that I've seen. It's true that Paul Lukas' rather heavy foreign accent makes him an odd choice for the role of Philo Vance, but his performance is otherwise quite good, and combined with the film's other strengths, that's enough to overcome this particular handicap. *** out of 4.