Bill Bartlett (Charles Starrett) is a reporter. He is sweet on Lillian Voyne (Shirley Grey). Lillian is a student at the local college and sings part time at a nightclub owned by Blackie Atwater (Maurice Black). Bill gives Lillian a ride to campus. Lillian has a meeting at 9:15 with a fellow student named Malcolm Jannings. Bill and Lillian get to the college at 9 o’clock. Bill decides to go to the paper for a while to work. Lillian decides to wait in Bill’s car until her scheduled meeting. Malcolm works at the college bell tower playing the carillon.
A few minutes after getting to the campus Bill can hear the carillon. Not too long after that he hears a gun shot. He runs to the door of the tower along with anyone else that heard the shot. He prevents anyone from entering the tower until the police arrive. Police Captain Ed Kyne (J. Farrell MacDonald) and Detective Sergeant Charlie Lorrimer (Dewey Robinson) show up to take over.
At the top of the bell tower, they find Malcolm dead. At first blush it appears to be suicide since no one else is there and no one came out of the tower. The tower is too far away from the other buildings to have had the shot come from there. There is no gun or powder burns on the body. He is shot in his left temple, but the man was right-handed. It’s definitely murder but who did it and how they did it is a mystery.
When Lillian finds herself a suspect in the murder, Bill finds himself investigating to try to prove her innocent. He enlists the help of the campus’ chemistry teacher, Professor C. Edson Hawley (Edward Van Sloan). Malcolm turns out to be just the first murder victim. Bill’s endeavors find him on the suspect list and in the middle of secrets and blackmail.
“Murder on the Campus” AKA “On the Stroke of Nine”, in Britain, was released in 1933 and was directed by Richard Thorpe. It is an American pre-code poverty row mystery distributed by Chesterfield Pictures. The movie is based on the novel “The Campanile Murders”, by Whitman Chambers.
It is a sort of locked room mystery at the top of a bell tower. The plot is a little involved but not all that difficult to follow. There are a couple plot holes and the writing could be a little tighter, but it was an entertaining film. The road to finding the killer was a little twisty. I managed to figure out who the killer was, but I had to stay to the end to find out how and why he or she did it.
A Campanile is a freestanding Italian bell tower. Many college campuses have similar towers.
Edward Van Sloan, who plays Professor C. Edson Hawley, was also the well-known Van Helsing from “Dracula” 1931. He was also Doctor Waldman in “Frankenstein” 1931 and Doctor Muller in “The Mummy” 1932. Charles Starrett, who plays the reporter Bill Bartlett, is better known for playing cowboys in westerns.
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