1947 Directed by Lambert Hillyer
Susan Hart, assistant to private detective Russ Ashton, is given a camera concealed in a hat box and assigned to take a picture of a woman. A gun is accidentally hidden in the box and the woman is killed. Susan is charged with murder, but Russ and his less-than-useful associate, Harvard, get on the case and prove that the fatal shot was fired by the killer from across the street.
USA
USA
Mini dick flick starring Tom Neal. And it's really little to little to fulfill any urges in the private eye genre. Allen Jenkins as the sidekick does help on the enjoyment level, but they didn't use him enough. They should have just added 20 more minutes for a normal length b-movie and given him more screen time and things would have been fine.
When a man visits the detective agency of Russ Ashton (Tom Neal), who is not in at the time, and speaks to the secretary (Pamela Blake), he asks that they get photo evidence of his wife cheating on him. He knows where she spends her time being unfaithful, and he gives the secretary a hat box with a camera hidden inside to secretly get an incriminating picture of her. She goes and sees the wife coming out, but when she takes the picture, a gun fires from inside the box! Now she's up the creek and he has disappeared, conveniently having gotten rid of his wife. But fear not; Ashton is on the case.
This was an amusing, though hardly…
Hats off.
6/10.
Taking a look in 2013 at posts recently made on IMDb's Classic Film board (RIP) for a poll that was to vote for the best film of 1947,I noticed that an IMDb'er listed,what sounded like an intriguing Film Noir in a "Would like to see" section of their post.
Searching around online,I was disappointed to find hardly any info of the movie around,which led to me doing an extensive search on the internet,until I happily,by pure luck finally ended up stumbling upon the kept well-hidden hat box.
View on the film:
Running at a short & sweet running time of 45 minutes,the screenplay by Don Martin,Maury Nunes and Carl K.Hittleman make the story fly by thanks to going…
I thought i had already seen the Least Convincing Moustache in a Drama, but turns out I hadn't because Tom Neal has it here. Loved Zon Murray as the silent dandy up the back who files his nails with a switchblade.
Another mystery solved by the Private Detective Trio!
I hadn’t known that this film came before The Case of the Babysitter, and perhaps it was best this way. The Hat Box Mystery is far better, in terms of many things: the characterization, the plot, and I believe it accomplishes more in the time slot than its sequel.
Watching this last made me appreciate its TV-serial quality. References that were made in the succeeding title are more easily understood. From elaborate telephone gags against bill collectors, bribery of policemen with cigarettes, and what not… I took delight in being strung along as Susan, Harvard, and Russ get hoodwinked by blackmailing crooks.
I loved the introduction prior to the opening credits. Tom Neal, Pamela Blake, Allen Jenkins, and Virginia Sale do a terrific job at it!
The humorous jab at Harvard—supposedly called so because he couldn’t get to Yale—made me cackle.
Speeds through all the beats! We've only got 44 minutes and we need to spend at least 10 mins of that discussing and consuming hamburgers!
Pretty fun and forgettable, except for the murder this is built around which is proper wtf, and also the cast introducing themselves to the audience to kick things off... by their real names, not their characters!? Strange.
Fairly routine mystery is memorable for two reasons: it runs only about 42 (!) minutes, and it opens with the four stars breaking the fourth wall and introducing themselves to the audience. Tom Neal, Pamela Blake, Virginia Sale, and Allen Jenkins played the same characters in THE CASE OF THE BABY SITTER, and if it weren’t 1947, it would be tempting to assume the two “features'' were episodes of a television series that didn’t make the network cut.
Neal (DETOUR), a private detective, is out of the office when bearded client Leonard Penn (THE LOST PLANET) engages his secretary, Blake (GHOST OF ZORRO), to photograph his philandering wife as evidence in a divorce case. Penn even hands her a hat…
Pamela Blake is "Susan", the assistant to PI Tom Neal ("Russ") whose business has rather hit the skids. Whilst he is away, she takes on a case trying to prove infidelity and using a hat box that, ostensibly, conceals a harmless camera she follows her target. Unfortunately, her snaps have a fatal consequence and she is charged with murder. It falls to "Russ" and his hapless helper "Harvard" (Allen Jenkins) to get to the bottom of it before "Susan" is toast. It's all just a routine B-drama with little jeopardy or menace, but it does have quite a few quite engaging scenes between "Harvard" and waitress "Veronica" (Virginia Sale) who offers him her body but he'd rather have a goose-burger.... It's short and sweet, and though pretty unremarkable, it does pass 45 minutes easily enough.
A detective, his idiot helper, their secretary, and the helper's gawky girlfriend (who runs a hamburger stand) have a tepid adventure.
There's an awkward opening: the actors talk directly to the camera and introduce themselves to us. Then things go spectacularly sideways when the secretary is asked to take a photo of a new client's cheating wife.
The rest is an odd unsatisfying (extremely short) mess. Characters who are unable to understand and/or follow simple instructions have very little to do. The music score sounds like it belongs in a different movie.
Tom Neal is the bland PI, with Pamela Blake as the careless secretary. Allen Jenkins galumphs around as the assistant, and moons over Virginia Sale as the hamburger lady.
Unnecessary and dull.
