A body is brought to the Chandler Undertaking Parlor. The face of the man was destroyed in a car crash. The attendants tell the assistant undertaker, Tommy Freeman (Harold Waldridge), that the name of the man is Clark C. McNaughton who was an attorney running for Governor of New York. Tommy notifies his boss, Dr. Joseph Chandler (Warner Richmond). Chandler tells him to get the body ready for burial. Dr. Raymond Everette (Theodore von Eltz) has offices alongside the parlor. Tommy, nervous about his first solo embalmment, asks Everette to watch the place while he goes out to the local speakeasy for some fortification. As soon as he leaves Everette’s fiancé, Ruth Daniels (Miriam Seegar) shows up to warn him that her father, Frank Daniels (Lucien Littlefield) is on the way to stop them from getting married. Everette and Daniels have an argument.
Shortly after that two Samaritans (William Scott and Charles Williams) find what they believe is a body in the alleyway next to the undertakers. They pick up the body and bring it to the funeral parlor. By now Everette has gone and Tommy has returned. One of the Samaritans tells the cops about the dead guy at Chandlers. As Tommy is working on the accident victim, the dead guy from the alley rises up under the sheet. Tommy runs away. When the police show up to collect the alley guy, no one is there. They take the accident victim thinking he is the alley guy.
The accident victim is mistakenly identified as Frank Daniels, Ruth’s father. Now the police want to question Dr. Everette, Ruth and Tommy. It turns out that Chandler had been trying to cover up a murder. McNaughton had gotten into an argument with a guy named Lee. Lee shot McNaughton but fled in a panic. He then died in a car crash that disfigured him. Chandler’s cohorts planned on burying Lee as McNaughton so that no one would know he had been shot, but now that the police have taken the accident victim, the cohorts buried McNaughton in the family crypt and the accident victim, Lee, ended up buried as Daniels.
Into all this mess comes a man with amnesia who thinks he knows something about the murder in the alley but can’t remember. Police Detective Brubacher (Eugene Pallette) is now in the middle of investigating the murder of a dead man who isn’t dead, and suspects who are actually witnesses as well as a suspect who is actually a victim.
“Strangers of the Evening” AKA “The Hidden Corpse” was released in 1932 and was directed by H. Bruce Humberstone. It is an American Pre-Code mystery film with comedy. The film was based on Tiffany Thayer's 1930 novel “The Illustrious Corpse”.
This was a rather confusing bit of mystery farce. It’s enjoyable, and worth a watch, but a bit mind numbing. There’s a lot more going on here and you’ll need to pay attention to all the players, as well as all the dead guys. When there isn’t a twist, there’s a turn, and the plot goes on forever. You might be better off looking at the movie as a comedy with some mystery rather than a mystery or thriller.
The main difference between this film and a comedy is that the mystery elements in a comedy are usually known by the audience, and we watch the characters find out what is going on as the movie progresses. Here the audience is kept in the dark along with the characters and we only learn what’s going on at the end.