THE MIDNIGHT WARNING. Mayfair Pictures, 1932. Also released as Eyes of Mystery. William [Stage] Boyd, Claudia Dell, Huntley Gordon, Johnny Harron, Hooper Atchley. Director: Spencer Gordon Bennet.

    An oddball detective film that may have been inspired by an actual event, The Midnight Warning stars William “Stage” Boyd as detective Bill Cornish investigating a disappearance: an ailing young man who had just recently checked into a hotel with his sister.

    She has to travel to Utah on urgent business, but when she returns her brother has vanished and absolutely everyone claims not to remember him (even though we, the audience, know better).

    So obviously there’s a cover-up — but why? The solution for me (which I will not reveal) was not very satisfactory, when one considers all the nicely-wrought mystification that precedes the denouement.

    Even odder, at this late remove from historical events, are the reasons given — an economic upturn in the Depression being chief among them. (The recent election of FDR seems to have led people, among them Hollywood writers, to believe mistakenly that happy times were here again — and yes, that is germane to the film’s plot.)

    Not only is this an oddball movie but also the detective himself is slightly off kilter: Instead of the usual hardboiled, self-assertive personality type, Cornish is more than willing to push others into compromising and even potentially dangerous situations, at one point getting a friend to act as a cats-paw. Despite all that, however, he still comes across as something of an amiable antihero.

    There is a nod to Sherlock Holmes when, early in the film, someone takes long range shots at a character through a window — indeed, he is wounded without realizing how it happened. Detective Cornish then sets a trap using a mannequin to pin down the shooter’s location.

    Later films took up the theme of someone vanishing from crowded areas: So Long at the Fair (1950) and Dangerous Crossing (1953). (The latter is based on a radio play, “Cabin B-13,” by John Dickson Carr.)

    The Midnight Warning is an engrossing little mystery with a great buildup but a disappointing reveal. It’s available on DVD from Amazon.com for about eight dollars.