The Roadhouse Murder (1932)

Oh, where to even start with this sad B movie.An ambitious young reporter who wants to get married and provide for his wife gets caught in a downpour with his fiancée. They duck into an inn. Hearing noise, they find someone in the next room dead, as well as the guy who let them in. The killer was a guy looking for money, and he had a woman with him -- they find the money, but she leaves her purse behind with her name and address inside.The reporter sets himself up as the murderer, but gives his fiancée the purse to keep to prove his innocence. He calls in the murder anonymously and then sends reports in of how it feels to be hiding and on the run from the cops.Eric Linden plays the idiot reporter who apparently never heard of hard work rather than schemes, and Dorothy Jordan, who is in for a life of misery if she marries this guy, is his fiancée.This was Bruce Cabot's first credited film, and soon after, he saved Fay Wray from King Kong.The film will remind some of the Fritz Lang film, "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt," which I happen to love. It will remind you of it, and then, hopefully, you will forget the comparison since there really isn't one.

Let's see if I have this right. A newspaper reporter and his girl friend are caught in a downpour. Their car is stuck in the mud so they stagger off to the nearest hostelry where they stumble on a murder. Most people would call the cops. But not our plucky newsman. He plants clues implicating himself as the killer so that he can cover the story from a unique angle. Of course, he has something that will prove his innocence. And of course...duh!!!!...that item mysteriously vanishes. Which means unless a miracle occurs, he's going to the chair. Okay, it was 1932 and movies were just learning to talk. But this has to be one of the dumbest ideas for a thriller, even for those early days. On the other hand, idiotic as it is, it's curiously entertaining.

The only reason I watched this one was to catch a glimpse of ERIC LINDEN, the man who played the amputee soldier in a devastating hospital scene from GONE WITH THE WIND where Dr. Meade gives the order to amputate. I had never seen him in a starring role.Indeed, here he looks nothing like the man in the GWTW epic--he's clean-shaven, youthful looking in a boyish sort of way that makes it hard to see how he could have played the amputee victim of war in that Selznick film classic. The make-up was a big help.The plot has a man framing himself for murder and then unable to prove that he didn't commit the crime when the time comes for him to produce the evidence that got away when his girlfriend's pocketbook was stolen by the real culprit--BRUCE CABOT.By now, this plot has been used many times and it has been done to better effect by directors like Fritz Lang, who used it in BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. Here, the story is weakened by some stereotyped newspaper types (particularly ROSCOE KARNS as the fast-talking editor), and some less than stellar supporting role performances.DOROTHY JORDAN is so-so as the femme lead and Linden is merely adequate in the role of the unwise reporter who gets caught up in circumstances beyond his control. Nothing special, but it holds the attention for its brief running time.

Reporter stumbles upon murder scene and gets the harebrained idea of framing himself for it. This will allow him to write a great human interest story about the thoughts and feelings of a man being hunted by the police. And of course he can prove that he didn't do it, when the time comes. And of course he winds up in much too close proximity to the electric chair. (What his cute g.f. Dorothy Jordan sees in this loser is a mystery to me.) The plot is as silly here as in nearly every other variation of the one where some moron frames himself for murder with good intentions, but Jordan is perky and helps carry the film in one of her bigger RKO roles. Seeing her name in the credits was the primary reason I watched this picture.Despite the story problems, picture is also well made by director J Walter Ruben (this was the second film of his that I had ever seen). Ruben and his films are largely forgotten, but he was one of the first writer-director double threats of the sound era, working nearly a decade at RKO before moving over to MGM where he produced but only occasionally directed, before his premature death in the early 1940s. Most of his films are well worth seeking out. TROUBLE FOR TWO, based on Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Suicide Club," is outstanding.