Lord Studholme (Malcolm Keen) is a newspaper tycoon. His secretary, Guy Kennion (Ian Hunter) is working on the final invitations to a small party Studholme is hosting for a visiting princess, Maria Amelia of Corsova (Muriel Aked). There will only be a few guests, all of which hate Studholme. He keeps his daughter Peggy (Jane Baxter) under his thumb and mistreats Guy. What he doesn’t know is that Guy and Peggy are married and are waiting for the right time to tell him.
Before the party Studholme visits Howard Vernon (Cecil Ramage). Vernon had an affair with a young woman named Joan Holland (Viola Keats). Vernon has some love letters that Joan wrote to him. Studholme buys the love letters. He tells Vernon that he wants to shield the young lady who wrote them. In reality he wants to blackmail Joan into having sex with him or he will publish the letters. Joan is a friend of Studholme’s daughter. Joan is also the daughter of Sir John Holland (Leslie Banks). Holland is the police commissioner. Joan and John are both on the invitation list.
Also invited are Chiddiatt (Ernest Thesiger) and his wife Anna (Jane Millican). Chiddiatt is an author that gets bad reviews from Studholme’s paper. Rounding out the list is Peggy’s grandfather, General Piddington (W. Graham Brown).
After dinner everyone is sitting around. The Princess suggests that they all play a game called “Murder”. Pieces of paper are put in a bowl. One of them says detective and one of them says murderer. All the rest are blank. Everyone picks a paper from the bowl. The lights are turned off for 10 minutes. During that time the murderer pretends to kill someone. The detective must then solve the crime and find out who the murderer is. Since the police commissioner is present, they automatically make him the detective. When the lights come back on Studholme is dead, for real. Holland has a problem in that some of the clues may point to his own daughter as the killer.
“The Night of the Party” AKA “The Murder Party”, in the U.S., was released in 1934 and was directed by Michael Powell. It is a British mystery thriller and a quota quickie. The movie was written by Roland Pertwee and John Hastings Turner and based on their own play. At one time the film was believed to be lost, however, in 2000 a copy was found at the London National Film Theatre.
This is a short film and most of it is the setup to the murder so it’s a little talkie. Thesiger does a good job of being an over-the-top novelist. Muriel Aked, as the slightly pixilated princess, is also a highlight. The rest of the cast are actually pretty good. I’ve seen Ian Hunter in a few films and he usually appears quite natural and believable when he is relating to his love interest in his films.
The plot is minimal and not all that inventive but there is a bit of a twist and turn at the end. I had a little trouble keeping some of the characters straight but the ending made it worth it.