Casey Duggan
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Jonah Abbott
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
Marva
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
Rainey Dawn
I acquired this film in the Dark Crimes 50-Pack. It's NOT a Dark Crime film but rather a light comedy crime drama. It involves a mystery: a stolen $50,000 Chinese Mandari stamp and murder - all in a hotel. Who is the murderer? Inspector Queen & Ellery Queen must find out (a father and son team).This particular Ellery Queen is just weird. He's young and bizarre. Loves a certain young lady that had her stamp stolen, bubble baths, a strange relationship with his father, weird gestures & expressions on his face and lame humor.This film is not bad - it's mediocre. Not a film I would care to watch again but fun enough for a one time watch.4.5 /10
Charles Reichenthal
If one can simply forget the literary Ellery Queen, this is an OK murder mystery (locked room murder, etc. etc. ). the problem, for Ellery Queen fans is that the whole thing, on that basis, is WAY off the mark. Queen is an analytical detective, and his father and the Police are not dolts. The books are written with more twists and turns and excellence that most others on the mystery shelf (with the possible exceptions of S.S. Van Dyne (Philo Vance) and, of course, Agatha Christie.)Dropping the comparison, one must note the ridiculousness of some of the plot e.g. the whole world knows the value of the stamp - it even appears on the Times Square news bulletin - yet the girl carries the stamp in an envelope in her open pocketbook. Despite all of this, Quillan is a fun actor, definitely not Ellery but giving the film the spunk it desperately needs. Charlotte Henry does not have a 'clue' and thus cannot handle the idiocy of what her character says and does. Still, on a chilly night, with the rain on the window, and curled up on a comfortable chair, this passes the time quickly.
Hitchcoc
Using the Ellery Queen characters, this little yarn spins a tale of a stolen stamp of great value. A murder is committed and the victim doesn't seem to fit the situation. It has that thirties silliness where all the police are a bunch of snarly knuckleheads. They couldn't find their way out of a shoebox. Anyway the young Queen, who is irreverent and extremely amorous, condescends to enter the case because he has designs on the leading lady, a feisty thing who doesn't seem to be affected by much of anything, including a corpse. There is a little crime solving of the CSI variety built in. There's lots of comedy, including a fainting hotel manager (who actually detracts from the affairs at hand. Still the plot is entertaining and fast moving and isn't as stilted and sappy than many of its genre. Queen is a bit too much for my tastes, but, then, this was another time and another place. It shows why the Thin Man series worked so well. It was the charm of their characters and they way they played off one another. Give this one a look if you can.
dpalmer-2
Nice little mystery, with a good deal of comedy mixed in. Eddie Quillan is not my favorite Ellery Queen, but he has an interesting twist to the character. I though Wade Boteler did a great job as Inspector Queen and Franklin Pangborn did a great job as comic relief as Mellish, the hotel manager.Overall, a nice film, I was quite pleased with it.
