#14 The Mystery of the 13th Guest

January 14, 2021
The Mystery of the 13th Guest (1941) **
TCM
Free
Wildcard

So, I spent the day thinking I was going to watch The Point, one of my favorite movies from childhood, but when I saw it streaming it was called “The Point (Ultimate Edition)” and I was like, the what, now? Turns out, it was just recently restored and put out onto a fabulous Blu-ray with loads of extras, so I immediately bought it, and also got a portable Blu-ray player so as to possibly mitigate the issue of only watching movies when I get home at night. Sometimes I have a big break in the middle of the day and don’t bother to go home, and don’t really want to watch a movie on my tablet using my cellular data. Also, I have loads of DVDs and Blu-rays, and this way, maybe I’ll watch them.

Anyway, back to yesterday. So, if I was going to get the Blu-ray of The Point, I didn’t want to watch it last night, which means that I again was stuck in the spiral of choosing a movie at midnight, and trust me, I’m as bored with the repetition as you are.

I ended up choosing The Mystery of the 13th Guest on TCM because, all together now, it is only an hour long! I have a feeling that by the time this year is up, I will have seen every movie in the TCM library with an under 80 minute runtime.

The Mystery of the 13th Guest is no hidden gem, it is a reasonably middling B picture with actors who can’t act so good, a director best known for making Bowery Boys movies, and a script with a super dumb plot.

A young woman goes to an empty house in the middle of the night in order to read a will left thirteen years before by her grandfather. Suddenly! She is killed! Or is she? A couple of cops (one, the comic relief, played by Ernie the cab driver from It’s a Wonderful Life) and a private detective try to find out which of the other potential heirs is also a killer.

I recommend this to zero people, but I didn’t not enjoy it. There’s a pull-quote for the poster!