MIDNIGHT WARNING (1932)
Article #733 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-18-2003
Posting Date: 8-15-2003
Directed by Spencer G. Bennet
Featuring William Boyd, Claudia Dell, John Harron

A doctor discovers an ear bone in the fireplace of his hotel room, and then mysteriously collapses. The detective who is visiting him investigates these strange events.

As I was watching this horror-mystery unfold, my wife recognized several of the plot elements as belonging to an urban legend about a vanishing lady. If you’re familiar with that legend (or with the 1919 movie, UNHEIMLICHE GESCHICHTEN), you’ll have an idea of how this story will turn out. Granted, the movie throws in plenty of other additions to the story, including a sniper subplot and a sequence in which a woman is wandering through a morgue of dead people; it’s the latter sequence that really adds the horror element to this forgotten horror. The plot elements do help to keep this one a bit interesting; otherwise, it’s creakiness and stiff acting may turn you off. The detective is played by William (“The Lost City”) Boyd.