Joan Marplay (Wendy Barrie) is on her way to London when she is almost hit by a car being driven by Lord Noel Stratton (Bruce Lester), one of the writers for the London Sun newspaper. The event causes Joan to miss her train. Noel offers to give her a lift to London to make amends.
Joan is the daughter of the former owner of the Sun, Lucius Marplay (Barlowe Borland). When she was a child, she was told that her father had died. Joan has just learned that Lucius is really alive but had been committed to the Hillsdale Sanatorium. He has been in the mental institution for twenty years. Joan wants to see her father, so she talks to her uncle, Sir John Digby (Reginald Barlow). Sir John agrees to talk to Lucius and see if he is up to a visit from his daughter.
At the sanatorium Lucius is in good spirits. He has devised a plan to escape from the facility and get revenge on those he believes were responsible for his being committed and for swindling him out of his ownership of the paper. The four men responsible are Mark Peters (Edmund Lowe), Ambrose Craven (Walter Kingsford), Sinclair Ellis (Boyd Irwin) and Nigel Partridge (Vernon Steele). During his incarceration Lucius wrote notebooks for each man detailing their crimes and how he is going to kill each of them.
Lucius succeeds in his escape and takes up residence at the old, abandoned news building that is next to the new building. Here he can hatch his plan. Before each murder he plans on sending each man their death notice which describes how, where and when their death will occur. Each obituary comes true as each man is killed. The notebook describing the event is left with each body. On the hunt for Lucius is Alastair MacNab (Forrester Harvey), who claims that he is a detective hired by the sanatorium to find their wayward patient.
“The Witness Vanishes” was released in 1939 and was directed by Otis Garrett. It is an American mystery film. The film was based on the story “They Can’t Hang Me!” by James Ronald. This was the last film that Universal and Doubleday did together as part of their Crime Club series.
The film wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. The story is really good but, unfortunately, it ended up being, not exactly slow going but most of the interesting stuff happens off camera. It’s not that it was a bad movie, I actually liked the concept. It’s the execution that left me a little flat. It’s lacking in a little continuity and is in need of some fleshing out. Otherwise, it is an alright but slightly bland mystery.
I have no idea what the ambiguous title is supposed to represent. There weren’t any witnesses and nobody vanished.