5/10
Barrymore On The Downslide
14 August 2020
John Barrymore goes out to give a speech. His wife, suffering from a headache, stays home.... but she's well enough to play the piano as he bids the desk clerk good night. When he returns home, however, she is dead, murdered, and in comes police detective Charles Bickford, crime reporter Lynn Overman, and the usual crowd of suspicious suspects, including J. Carrol Naish, Evelyn Brent, and Wlizabeth Patterson.

It's a remake of the pre-code GUILTY AS HELL; that was remarkable only for Karl's Struss's camerawork, a decently executed locked-room mystery. Erle Kenton directed both versions. This one has Bickford angry about everything all the time; this leave Overman to figure out whodunnit. Some of the pre-code spice is left in, but muted. It's another decently-executed programmer.
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