User Reviews

You have to be a fan of Bela Lugosi to really enjoy this film. The pacing is slow, the direction is wooden, and many of the supporting cast is just so-so.

Being a filmed stage play in the very early talky era, The Thirteenth Chair doesn't have much action. What it does have is Bela Lugosi who becomes the focus of the film as Inspector Delzante as soon as he makes an appearance. There are few surprises to anyone who has seen very many mysteries, but a few genuinely spooky scenes occur in the darkened room as the sound takes over and your imagination is allowed to supply the imagery. On the prints that I have seen the sound is of a poor quality with a high level of hiss as in so many older films. It takes some dedication to sit through, and listening carefully to understand all the dialogue. It is fascinating to see Lugosi as a key supporting character before he was typecast.

Recently saw this enjoyable little curio on TCM. Adding to the comments of others on the matter of style, I was surprised to notice several examples of short graceful tracking shots forward or back, just to break up the sense of staginess. (The mansion has very smooth floors!) So it's not that the camera is absolutely static. But Browning avoids close-ups for the most part. What was odd is the editing at certain times, which seems way off. There's one bizarre moment when the actors are clearly gathered in preparation for when the director calls "Action," and then after a few seconds, they abruptly begin speaking to each other in mid-sentence. (I'd like to see someone do a whole movie like that!) There's an equally strange edit when Margaret Wycherley walks out of the frame to confront Bela Lugosi (a few steps away), and then we cut to Lugosi sitting in his chair waiting an awfully long time beside dead space for her to walk into frame. I wonder what that was about?

Given the numerous bad reviews I didn't expect to enjoy the film as much as I did. If you are an old classic movie fan, you can overlook the poor sound and visual clarity of a 1929 film, especially when the story and cast hold your attention. Leila Hyams and Margaret Wycherley are excellent, as is seeing Bella Lugosi in an earlier film role. For a movie shot in basically in two rooms, I think it was well done. I'm glad I didn't let some of the low ratings deter me from watching, it's nice to be surprised when you come across an old gem.

Some films are known more for the trivia associated with them than their actual content - The Thirteenth Chair (1929) being one of them. As the first sound film for director Tod Browning and his first collaboration with the Hungarian emigre actor Bela Lugosi it is these points of interest in a film a few years before Dracula (1931) that draw most attention.

Browning seems very restricted by the early sound recording systems and this very theatrical film plays out mostly on a single set in prolonged wide shots. The opening scene as a mysterious figure enters a building and almost steps on a pool of blood left by a murder victim is handled with some style but is one of the few visual treats in a very static film.

Lugosi is very engaged in his part, talking much faster and with greater passion than his lugubrious Dracula performance, indicating the latter was very much an interpretation of his original stage part. His dramatic confrontation with the suspects is full of passion and a certain intensity. Of the remaining cast John Davidson as Edward Wales is the sole standout, bringing a creepy intensity and mystery to his role, which is portrayed as one of mystery.

Existing prints of this film are fairly washed out and damaged which reduces the ability of the modern viewer to identify clearly what is going on. A full restoration might be of benefit if quality elements exist but this is far from being the forgotten masterpiece of early sound horror that a viewer might have hoped for.

THE STORY & (Pseudo)GENRE -- The backbone of the story and the pseudo-genre is a phony seance. Then comes the police investigation headed by Inspector Delzante (Bela Lugosi). ASHSFF Tangential.

THE VERDICT -- Don't let 'em fool ya, this is a quite serviceable period film. Credit expert director Tod Browning (DRACULA, FREAKS, et.al.), and game actors Lugosi & Holmes Herbert.

FREE ONLINE -- Yes, 72 minutes sound version, most often found with Spanish hardsubs, but you can find it without those hardsubs if you look around.

Quite surprisingly, an awful film. I've liked a lot of director Tod Browning's films, both before and after this effort (He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Unknown (1927), Where East is East (1929), Freaks (1932), and The Devil-Doll (1936)), but this one is uncharacteristically dry as toast. One common factor from another film of his that I didn't care for as much as others (Dracula (1931)) is Bela Lugosi, who I find wooden and awkward, but he doesn't account for all of the film's problems. Everyone is wooden and awkward. It's is a shame, because also in the cast is Margaret Wycherly, who was so great in White Heat twenty years later, and Leila Hyams, a lesser-known actor who I've liked seeing in supporting roles in other films from this era.

The sins of the film are many. The direction and editing is so poor it's hard to fathom from Browning, though I read later that some of his issues stemmed not only from sound being a new and limiting technology, but that sound director Douglas Shearer (brother of Norma) was part of the problem. I'm not sure if that's true or false, but regardless, the end product is awful, visually and sound-wise. It doesn't help that the quality of the surviving print has degraded, often making it hard to understand the dialogue. I can't recall a single scene or moment that I thought was truly good; almost all of the action takes place in a single room, and it's worse than stagey. There is never a 'wow' or macabre moment, or even an interesting turn of the plot. What could have been an interesting story along the line of an Agatha Christie mystery, with all of the potential culprits in the room with the detective sifting through the facts, becomes an exercise in tedium, moving at a snail's pace. I advise avoiding this one like the plague.

1929's "The Thirteenth Chair" marked the talkie debut of MGM director Tod Browning, and also future "Dracula" Bela Lugosi, whose lead performance here should have made him a star even earlier. It was indeed his Broadway triumph that inspired Browning to cast him in a part played for laughs in Bayard Veiller's original stage version of 1916, the author's then wife Margaret Wycherly as the phony medium Madame La Grange, repeating the role in this version after missing out on the silent adaptation of 1919 (a second remake came out in 1937). A murder has already been committed before the opening scene, a curious Philip Wales (John Davidson) certain that the killer was a veiled woman, the setting a British mansion in Calcutta, where Lugosi's Inspector Delzante ferrets out the suspects until a little sleight of hand pointing at the murder weapon finally reveals the guilty party. The cast are required to stand around before an immobile camera and recite witless dialogue that drags things out further even at a mere 72 minutes, but once Bela enters at the 35 minute mark he takes charge and lights up the screen to our benefit. Despite two seances and a corpse present for the finale the mystery itself is strictly ho hum, unable to raise a single goose pimple for the killer's reveal. In a lesser actor's hands the Inspector might have come off as bullying and abrasive, but Lugosi, surrounded by so many stiffs besides those already deceased, contributes the only life the picture has, reuniting with Leila Hyams in Paramount's "Island of Lost Souls" (Margaret Wycherly would later be immortalized as James Cagney's mother in Raoul Walsh's 1949 "White Heat").

Directed by Tod Browning, The Thirteenth Chair is a well-written and acted murder mystery from a time (1929) when, due to primitive sound recording techniques, the camera had to remain in one place during a scene. The result is that the movie, while well-designed, is rather static visually. It more than makes up for this by having an exciting, if at times rather hard to follow plot, and an ingenious script with enough twists and turns in the plot to satisfy most mystery fans. For claustrophiles the movie is a delight: no one goes ANYWHERE in this film. There are some interesting visual and spatial peculiarities in the movie, such as very high ceilings on the sets, and more obviously fake than usual exteriors just outside the windows. People have a way of assembling in rooms rather than just sitting there or milling around, which gives the movie an offbeat, ritualistic feeling; probably typical enough in the theater of the time, but unusual in a film.

The actors, notably Margaret Wycherly, are quite good, with Bela Lugosi giving an energetic reading of a shrewd police detective in a quite different key from his later work. One can't help but wonder what sort of screen actor Lugosi might have become had he not been typecast in horror roles. Leila Hyams is radiant as one of the chief suspects, and it's remarkable that she didn't become a bigger star, on looks alone. There is no pace to speak of in the film, as the story proceeds by dialog, and by people entering and exiting rooms on cue. Nor are there any of the typical Browning flourishes, as the movie seems anonymously directed. But the script is very tight, and there are some surprises along the way, and moments of unexpected warmth and feeling that make this a watchable and satisfying antique.

In the early days of talking pictures, movies were rather awkward because the sound equipment was so cumbersome and antiquated. It was also awkward simply because directors and actors were used to making silents and making the acting seem normal and natural was an evolving process...and it's obvious in "The Thirteenth Chair" that it still needed a lot of evolution! The dialog is, at times, clunky and unnatural and the delivery often sounded like a stage production instead of a movie. To make it worse, the film had some of the absolute worst editing I've ever seen. For example, a man and woman are talking in the garden and yet the camera keeps cutting back to other folks in another part of the house...and you can still hear the lovers making small talk. Another example are times that folks have their backs to the camera for extended periods as they talked. Surprisingly, the director was Tod Browning...one of the best directors of the 1930s and the man responsible for some of the best horror films of all time (such as "Dracula" and "Freaks"). He obviously still had a lot to learn in 1929.

This murder mystery is unusual because it begins AFTER some scoundrel has been murdered. In order to trap the unknown killer, a seance is being staged...and it's hoped that the murderer will betray themselves.

The story is not too bad but it's obvious that it was a play first. And, instead of properly adapting it to film, it looks much like they just filmed the play...and poorly. Even with a chance to see and hear Bela Lugosi in his first talking film, it's a curio...but a dull one.

This seems to have been the first major film role film for Bela Lugosi. He dominates the film entirely, with tremendous confidence and panache. Two years later, he and the same director, Tod Browning, would make their famous horror classic 'Dracula' (1931) together. This film is based on a stage play by Bayard Veiller, whose wife, Margaret Wycherley, played the medium both on stage and in the film, to great effect. Since talkies only commenced the year before, this 1929 film does very well in the sound department. What is really terrible about it is the editing, some of the worst any feature film ever had: a woman gets up from her chair and exits frame and we wait for some time, then we cut to the next frame and wait an endless age for her to enter that frame. Really appalling! Tod Browning either had no control over this process or had not learned to direct properly yet. Despite the slow pace and creaky nature of the production, the film nevertheless manages to be intriguing in its excellently complex mystery plot. It is one of those 'people in a room in the dark' films: whodunnit? There are plenty of surprises. The story is ostensibly set in Calcutta, under the Empire, although shot entirely in a studio. It is an interesting study of how British Empire types behaved in the 1920s, hence of considerable social history interest as a 'document'. (They don't come out of it well, being so arch, false, and over-mannered that one does not regret their passing.) The main action centres round a seance and the activities of a medium, in connection with trying to solve the murder of someone who was 'an out and out rotter'. Despite its shortcomings, this film is still entertaining and worth watching.

Early talkie feature based on a popular stage play. A murder has been committed and a bunch of people hire a medium to conduct a séance to see who the murderer is. While the lights are out there's ANOTHER murder...so it's someone in that room.

What follows is an obvious, dull and creaky murder mystery. Most of the cast overacts to a ridiculous degree. They act like they're on stage (where you have to overdo things) and it looks silly on screen. Most embarrassing is Bela Lugosi (two years before "Dracula") who REALLY overdoes it as a police inspector. Static direction by Tod Browning (who was always overrated) doesn't help.

For Browning and Lugosi completists only. I give it a 3.

Some years back, this film had been scheduled for broadcast on TCM UK as part of a Tod Browning retrospective – but what they actually showed was the 1937 remake!; my brother had watched it (and, in hindsight, it followed the original pretty much scene-for-scene, even down to the set design) – though no classic, he said it was a far more satisfying viewing experience than the incredibly creaky earlier version…

This being the first collaboration between Browning and Bela Lugosi, I had high hopes for it – but these were quashed when it became evident after the first reel of tedious conversation that the film's main concern was to appease the still-novel sound technique, and consequently the result is stagey and extremely static. The thriller plot isn't exactly exciting either; even less appetizing is the ostensible British-Indian setting (with the characters' affected accents and upper-class demeanor – not to mention the over-use of corny idiosyncratic idioms such as "I say", "rather" and "now look here" – rendering the whole risible more than anything else)!

Apart from this, there are a few unintended howlers: Margaret Wycherly (as a fake medium) pleads with Police Inspector Lugosi (if anything, his undeniable screen presence is already evident) to give her some time to 'work out' who the culprit of the double-murder really is (the evidence points to her own daughter, played by Leila Hyams!) – she hears a tapping and is deluded into thinking that the spirit world has genuinely made contact with her…but then Lugosi enters the room and, in his unmistakable accent, straight-facedly tells her "I knocked twice – you didn't hear me!", at which my brother and I almost fell to the floor in convulsions of laughter!!; the editing is really sloppy, too: during one high-angle shot of the main set, a mike is seen being rapidly pulled up out of camera range – and even worse are a couple of instances where a person walks off-screen, ostensibly into the next shot, to another part of the set…but each shot is held on the other actors for an absurdly long time, so that it appears to take forever for this person to walk just a few paces!!

THE THIRTEENTH CHAIR marks the third non-horror Browning Talkie that I've watched – even if both this and MIRACLES FOR SALE (1939) deal with murder and occultism and could, therefore, still be linked to the genre. Much has been said about the director's apparent slackening with the coming of Sound: however, flawed though they may be, the 4 straight horror films he did throughout the 30s are infinitely better than the rest – which I've always found stylish and bizarre enough to suggest that Browning wasn't as much at sea during this period as has been suggested

When sound came to the motion picture there must have been a scramble for written material of any kind for the studios. Once it was proved it could be done, the public wanted to hear their screen idols speak and they had to have dialog.

What works on stage did not often work on screen and when The Thirteenth Chair was made the studios were still getting sound right. We got all kinds of dialog, but here it was all kind of static and dull. And the cast generally overacts in this film

Two performers here stand out. Margaret Wycherly best known as the mothers of Alvin York and Cody Jarrett later on was in the original cast on Broadway when it opened in 1916. She plays a psychic medium who is brought in to solve a murder already committed. During the séance the guy who arranged the séance is also dispatched. After that the cops call in.

Lots of mysteries always have that climatic scene where the detective gathers the suspects be it Nick Charles or Jane Marple. But this is a film where the whole film is that scene. The other actor is Bela Lugosi who in this mystery set in British India speaks that marvelous Hungarian as a Scotland Yard detective.

Lugosi acquits himself well, but he's just so well known in those horror films I expected him to be the murderer.

Everybody overacts, but they were learning on the job the art of acting in talking pictures.

In British India, a séance in Calcutta leaves a dead man sitting in THE THIRTEENTH CHAIR...

Under the able direction of Tod Browning, this antique talkie weaves a taut tale of murder & suspense. The oppressive atmosphere & limited use of sets creates a claustrophobic sense of eerie unreality. The excellent utilization of sound during the sequences of almost total screen blackout demonstrate the director's understanding of the potentialities of the new medium.

Conrad Nagel & Leila Hyams receive top billing, but they have little to do beyond looking frightened or concerned. This they accomplish quite well.

The film is dominated by two fascinating performances. Bela Lugosi makes a rather bizarre police inspector, his mesmeric eyes, claw-like hands & compelling voice giving an early demonstration of the qualities which would make him one of the screen's top monsters (Lugosi & Browning would have to wait two more years for the huge success of their next collaboration, DRACULA). Elderly Margaret Wycherly, as a wily Irish medium, is a delight and easily steals scene after scene. It is she who comes up with the plan to ultimately unmask the killer.

Thirteenth Chair, The (1929)

** (out of 4)

Early Tod Browning talkie has a man murdered during a psychic reading. The local inspector (Bela Lugosi) shows up to solve the case. This mystery/thriller doesn't have too much mystery nor thrills and in the end comes off incredibly slow moving and boring. Once again, this sound film features none of the wonderful techniques delivered by the director in his silent films. As with most early sound movies, this one here simply has way too much talk and not much of it very interesting. Even though he gets sixth billing, this is certainly Lugosi's film and he delivers a pretty good performance as the fast talking, often screaming inspector. Lugosi's accent stands in the way from understanding a few lines but it isn't too bad. I would have deducted another half star had it not been for the Browning weirdness showing up in the end when a dead body helps solve the murder. In the end this is only for Lugosi or Browning fans who need to see everything the men did.

I'm a Bela Lugosi fan, mostly from his low budget horror films because they are so bad and outrageous that they are entertaining like The Phantom Creeps or one of his Ed Wood films. TCM showed this with an introduction that explained this was a very early sound film that was shot also as a silent film for theaters that had not yet upgraded to sound. I'm always interested early sound films, my favorite so far being The Sea Bat which was also filmed in silent and sound versions and coincidently has Boris Karloff in it (in a supporting role). It's interesting from a technical point of view how early sound filmmaking evolved so quickly from this film of 1929 to The Sea Bat of 1930, the differences in quality are stark. Needless to say, I am not at all impressed by this film. I like all the silent film makeup and the wild swinging of arms to convey a message for the silent version of the film but it intrudes with the talking version and the result is a bad film. The dialog is similar to the exaggerated examples used in Singing in the Rain when they started doing sound films with long (LONG!) gaps of dialog or abnormal pauses and dialog that is weak in general and spoken in screaming volumes. Looking for something to be entertained, I tried to laugh at the dialog and the now established actors in early sound roles. Bela has one very thick accent here so you could probably get amused by that. We see the back of his head way too much as he speaks! When his Detective character who acts a lot like his Dracula character is interrogating Margaret Wycherly's Fortune Teller character, I couldn't help but think it was Sergeant York's Mother in the film. Her accent is also really thick, how did that Appalachian York woman end up in "Calcutta, India"? Although I think this is a badly made film, it's definitely worth watching to see early Lugosi in sound films. I can only give it a four though because I have watched several 1929 films and this was the least entertaining one I've ever seen. Unless you are a film history, Lugosi, Tod Browning or Margaret Wycherly fan, you will probably stop watching it early in before Lugosi is on camera. It's on TCM on demand as I review this in 2019.

Excessively stilted and hammy acting from John Davidson, Helene Millard, Leila Hyams, Conrad Nagel, and yes, Bela Lugosi. It may have been the style of the times but to modern eyes it is unbearable. Though at times melodramatic, Margaret Wycherley fares better, as do several of the supporting cast.

This isn't a typical Tod Browning film. It's more or less a very basic filming of a stage play (I gather; I don't know that for sure, but it feels very stagey) about a group of rich people who hire a medium to find out who killed their friend (and, to some of the group, an enemy). When they go into their seance, right as the name of the killer is about to be spoken, one of the men in the circle, the one who was succeeding at questioning the medium, is stabbed in the back. They then call a detective (Bela Lugosi) who grills them, trying to discover who murdered both of these men. I don't generally like whodunits, especially the Clue variety, where a detective gathers all the suspects in a room and attempts to root out the real killer, but The Thirteenth Chair is exceptionally written. The characters, and there are many, are quite well developed. The climactic scene, while asking that we suspend our disbelief, is truly suspenseful. See this gem if you ever get the chance. 9/10.

This film proves that in 1929 a lot of talking films were still primitive and although most of the cast seemed reasonably at ease with dialogue, John Davidson's perfect and slow pronunciation really stuck out. There is even a scene toward the end where people are grouped (obviously waiting to begin the scene) and after a few seconds they start talking and mingling. "Locked room" movies were all the rage in these early days - one set was all that was needed and the studios could then show off their sound skills. For MGM, who had already made "The Broadway Melody", "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney" and "Halelujah", this film was static and unimaginative. The magic that Tod Browning had weaved with Lon Chaney in the 20s seemed to evaporate when talking pictures appeared. Apart from "Dracula" and "Freaks", which harked back to his days as a director of shock and suspense, he spent the rest of his career in programmers and remakes of his silent hits.

It also feels like it has a few minutes missing from the start - or I'm a bit dense!! Everyone seems to know what's going on already - renowned womaniser Spencer Lee has been killed by a woman - but which woman??? Ned Wales (John Davidson) is the only person in the house who liked Lee (Spencer had saved him from drowning when they were children) and who is determined to find his killer. Even he acts suspiciously, trying to bribe the servants (again, the action obviously takes place in India but the audience is never told). There is an establishing shot of the two leads, Richard Crosby (Conrad Nagel) is trying to convince Helen O'Neill (Leila Hyams) to marry him. It's the old "you may be only my mother's secretary but you're good enough for me" routine. Nagel and Hyams may have been the leads but they are only required to stand around looking worried, fearful, determined etc.

The stage is set for the show down between the real stars - wonderful Margaret Wycherley as the medium Madame La Grange, an unassuming "nanny" type, who nevertheless, has a few secrets and menacing Bela Lugosi as Inspector Delzante and he still manages to act like Dracula. Even though that film role was 2 years in the future he had played it on Broadway on and off during the 20s. Just to hear him say "What you propose is too horrible to contemplate - but we will do it!!!

Margaret Wycherley was a character actress supreme. She really hit her stride in the 40s and even though you struggle to remember some of the movies, you definitely remember her ("Johnny Angel" - she played a domineering nanny). Of course she was Ma Jarrett in "White Heat" and Ma Forrester in "The Yearling" - "my boy, my poor crookedy boy". In "The Thirteenth Chair" she was a breath of fresh air and proved stage actors weren't always stiff. Her husband, Bayard Veiller wrote the original play "The Thirteenth Chair" that had a healthy run of 328 performances, back in 1916 and in which Margaret Wycherley played the same role of Rosalie La Grange.

Recommended.

Looking at the reviews, I saw that there was a group that loved the film and a group that hated it. When I see this kind of sharp dichotomy, I like to comment. I first saw the overall rating as 5.1, which seemed unfairly low. I liked the film because it was very superior writing and I was wowed by the performances of Margaret Wycherly and Bela Lugosi. The film was taken from a play with the dialog mostly intact. The writing for the play, as well as the play itself, was a critical and popular success - as was the film. Margaret Wycherly was a well-known and highly respected British actress who also appeared in the play. All reviews are valid if they honestly and clearly describe the reviewer's reactions. I don't like murder mysteries, but I took a chance on this one because I liked the story outline and I was pleasantly surprised. I happen to hate horror pictures so I was not a fan of Bela Lugosi, but he was great in this non-horror role. One negative review called it too "stagey" and indeed that's a valid observation as it was a stage play adapted to film. I have seen stage plays that were filmed as they were played on stage, but the filmed version never seemed right - however, this stage script was very well adapted to film - also keeping the high quality script intact. Perhaps, the most telling negative comment was that the film was "dull". And indeed if one really likes standard murder mystery films with lots of physical action (or if one is just in the mood for such), one might find the film "dull". The reader of reviews needs to find which reviews reflect his/her tastes and criteria and go with that review.

This film is only a 5.x out of ten if you don't like the early sound films, in which case, what are you doing here? You get to see Bela Lugosi as a police inspector, two years before he becomes forever typecast in horror roles as a result of "Dracula", although his deep Hungarian accent in colonial India is unexplained. But that's alright, because there is also an mystic with a deep Irish accent who has somehow ended up in India and managed to raise a daughter without the same said accent. The mother and daughter have become estranged, but why and how are never explained.

Lugosi's character is investigating a murder - two actually. At the beginning of the film, Spencer Lee, described by his own best friend as a rotter, has already been murdered by person unknown. Apparently Lee was quite a lady's man and generally just a bad guy all around, so any number of people could have killed him. The best friend, Edward Wales, suggests a séance conducted by the previously named mystic. Meanwhile, the son of an aristocratic family (Conrad Nagel as Richard Crosby) is having trouble with his fiancée (Leila Hyams as Helen O'Neil) who says she has no right to marry him. Richard thinks it is because she is a secretary and he comes from a rich family, but there is obviously something else troubling Helen a great deal.

The séance is held in the Crosby home, and the participants see this mainly as an interesting diversion, but when the time comes for Wales to ask the spirit of his dead friend, Spencer Lee, who murdered him, there is a scream, and when the lights come on, Wales is dead with a knife in his back. Supposedly this was done by someone in the séance circle to prevent the spirit of Spencer Lee from answering his friend.

Several other reviewers note Bela Lugosi as the reason to watch this one, but I pick Margaret Wycherly as the psychic. She plays one of the oddest and most intriguing characters of any era of film. She acts more like a tour guide in her friendliness than a mystic, and then proceeds to show everybody all of her tricks when she is faking as a means of proving that this time she is not faking. She actually solves the crime with the help of Lugosi's character, who, upon hearing her idea to expose the murderer says "What you propose is too horrible to contemplate – but we will do it!" She gives such an odd but likable performance it is a wonder she wasn't nominated for best actress.

This early talkie is not too talkie - in that there may be quite a bit of conversation, but it is all for a purpose. It really is quite creative throughout and the plot twists will keep you guessing. I recommend it, just remember you are dealing with the limitations of very early sound film, which primarily was movement.