I’LL NAME THE MURDERER. Puritan Pictures, 1936. Ralph Forbes, Marion Shilling, Malcolm MacGregor, James Guilfoyle, John W. Cowell, Wm. Norton Bailey, Agnes Anderson, Charlotte Barr-Smith, Mildred Claire. Director: Raymond K. Johnson.

   I certainly can’t stop you, but I’m going to tell you up front that I’m probably not going to say anything in this review that will encourage you one iota to see this movie. On the other hand, don’t get me wrong. Just because it’s another run-of-the-mill mystery movie made in the 30s by a film company you never heard of doesn’t mean that it’s a bad movie. Unless you’re like me, that is, and you can’t get enough of these slapdash mystery movies and only watch them for the sheer fun of doing so.

   Dead is a nightclub singer who, as it turns out, she has made a lot of enemies, and what’s worse, from the point of view of those trying to name the killer, there plenty of them in and around her dressing room where she was stabbed to death.

   Assisting them in their duty, whether they want his help or not, are a well-known gossip columnist (Ralph Forbes) and a lady photographer for the same paper (a cheerfully chipper Marion Shilling). Assisting them in turn is a PI named Joe Baron (James Guilfoyle), but in only an auxiliary role.

   At the basis of the victim’s death, or so it seems, is a batch of old love letters she’s using for a bit of blackmail, but this is more than a one-note samba. There is, as expected, more to it than that. The title of this film, by the way, comes from the fact that toward the end of it Tommy Tilton advertises in one of his daily columns that he’s far ahead of the police and will announce who the murderer is in the following day’s paper.

   All of the players were new to me. Some had long careers, however, and some not so long. For one of them, this was the only movie she was ever in. Among the others with short career was the very plain if not unattractive (shall we say) young woman who played Joe Baron’s secretary. She’s quick with a quip, hwever, and a sharp retort, and she caught my attention right away. She’s not in the credits, so I had to look her up on IMDb after the movie was over. Her name was Louise Keaton, and that may be enough to tell you whose younger sister she was.

   Little bits like this always makes movies like this one, worth watching.