The Preview Murder Mystery (1936)

Rod Laroque ("DuBeck") has been getting threatening letters as he tries to conclude a film shoot at Paramount. Nobody is much surprised as he is a bit of a pain in the neck, but when the unthinkable does happen it falls to Reginald Denny ("Johnny Morgan") to get to the bottom of things. He'd better get a move on, because it is soon pretty clear that the killer has a vendetta against the entire cast! The investigation itself is fairly formulaic, but it has the added interest of showing us much of the behind-the-scenes aspects of life in Hollywood and of those on the sound stages. Director Robert Florey has used his budget quite creatively here - the action is pretty much constant, either relating to the search for the killer, or to the making of the feature. The, admittedly wordy, dialogue is not without some plausibly fun digs at the film-making process and at the real-life legends involved in front of and behind the camera. The story itself is really neither here nor there, but it is an entertaining mix of fact and fiction that though fairly predicable, still pitches a decent, workmanlike, cast and I quite enjoyed watching it.