The Death Kiss (1932)

Wonderful! One of Lugosi's best films, but not oddly enough because of either his presence or his performance. True, he handles his role capably and exudes a fair amount of charisma, but his part is not all that large and most of his thunder is stolen by other players, particularly Alexander Carr as the penny-pinching, would-be Romeo of a studio head, Harold Minjir as his put-upon yet uppity assistant, John Wray as an argumentative detective, and last, but by no means last, David Manners as a charmingly resourceful buttinsky who is only too happy to help our siren of a heroine, Adrienne Ames, avert any and all pitfalls. For a while there it looks like even Jimmy Donlin is going to garner more attention than Bela, but his role fades away as the film progresses.Mind you, for silent movie fans, The Death Kiss is something of a windfall. Barbara Bedford, our lovely heroine of Tumbleweeds and The Notorious Lady, can be spotted early on as a script girl (she has no dialog, alas), while her director, King Baggot, has a sizable scene as a helpful electrician. Frank O'Connor, the director of Devil's Island and The Block Signal, can be spotted in a number of sequences as a uniformed policeman, while Neely Edwards who had an extensive silent career (over 140 films) enjoys a key scene with David Manners. Atmospherically directed in an admirably fluid style by Edwin L. Marin (in his directorial debut), The Death Kiss emerges as a fascinatingly true-to-life, ingeniously suspenseful murder mystery. Not the least of its attractions, of course, are the many behind-the-scenes glimpses of long-vanished Tiffany Studios. (I always thought it was a hole-in-the-wall outfit. I was dead wrong. It's huge!)

Pre-code mystery about a murder on a film set. Historically interesting for film buffs as this was produced by the largely forgotten Tiffany Pictures and filmed at their studio. Good cast includes a reunion of three Dracula stars: Bela Lugosi, Edward Van Sloan, and David Manners. Somewhat surprisingly, Manners has the biggest part of the three. All three are enjoyable but I think this is the best role I've seen Manners in. He's more relaxed in his line delivery and less stagy than usual. He shows more personality in this movie than all his more famous Universal movies combined. Lugosi playing a "normal" character is a change. Van Sloan is great as always. Nice camera-work for the period. Other reviewers have called it slow but I thought it was well-paced. It's essentially a drawing room mystery without the drawing room. When you've seen enough of a certain kind of film from a certain period, finding one that's different in any way is a big plus. This is a solid '30s murder mystery that should have some added appeal for fans of Dracula or Universal horror in general.

THE DEATH KISS is an acceptable murder mystery from the early days of sound cinema. The whole movie takes place on a movie set, which makes for quite a fun and atypical viewing experience, and the opening sequence is a cracker: a character is murdered by a mystery assassin in film, only for the cast to discover that the actor has been killed for real. Which of them did it? This film has a short running time like many of its ilk, which means that it runs through the various police procedural bits at speed. The comic relief is quite laboured but I enjoyed it, especially the efforts of the bumbling security guard. Horror fans will enjoy seeing Bela Lugosi in support, as he's given something a little different to do here, and there's even a role for Edward Van Sloan, teaming up with Lugosi again after Dracula. THE DEATH KISS isn't an amazing film or anything, but it's an effective time-waster and I particularly enjoyed the reveal at the climax.

Freshman director Edwin L. Marin's murder mystery "The Death Kiss" qualifies as a good crime yarn about a shooting at a film studio during a scene in a gangster movie. Clocking in at 71 minutes, this whodunit is another one of those where an amateur finds all the clues and solves the murder because the authorities cannot. Marin doesn't squander a second, and scenarists Gordon Kahn of "X Marks the Spot" and Barry Barringer of "Murder at Dawn" keep you guessing up until the last few minutes as they contrive one red herring with another to throw you off the scent. A scenarist is the sleuth who clears the reputation of an ex-wife who had everything to gain with the death of her former husband. Interesting, Bela Lugosi plays a studio producer. Although the Lugosi character hovers over most of the scenes, he is not the culprit. Nevertheless, Marin and his writers use him as a red herring, too. Of course, the police don't appreciate our protagonist sticking his nose into their criminal investigation. Not only does the snooping Drew locate the bullet that killed actor Myles Brent during the lensing of one scene, but he also discovers the gun used in the murder. The cast is first-rate, with handsome David Manners playing a studio scribe. Once again, Vincent Barrett provides the comic relief as a studio cop named Officer Gulliver. The dialogue is pretty snappy, too. An interesting bit of trivia about "The Death Kiss" is that it reunites three actors who appeared in Todd Browning's "Dracula." David Manners, Bela Lugosi, and Edward Van Sloan co-starred in "Dracula." Efficiently made, "The Death Kiss" is a worthwhile whodunit with some occasionally scintillating dialogue. Furthermore, this opus furnishes audiences with an idea about how films are produced and the various roles that go into a film production.