This is held up by some decent performances from the lead actors, but overall it comes across as a rather lifeless murder mystery. A killer called "The Black Ace" is on the loose. He announces his intentions to kill in advance by sending an ace of spades to his next victim. The movie opens with one of the killings and then shifts to the victim's best friend, Thornton Drake (Henry Stephenson) who is the next announced victim when an ace of spades shows up along with a letter announcing that he'll be killed "tomorrow at seven." To avoid his fate, he bundles those around him on a plane and travels to his plantation in New Orleans, but on the way the plane's lights go off and there's another murder on board in the dark, with an obviously limited number of suspects. In New Orleans, the search continues.
Stephenson was good in his role, and Chester Morris (as crime novelist Neil Broderick) was decent enough as well. Those two aside, though, there really didn't seem to be a great deal of energy in this. Particularly disappointing were the attempts to inject a degree of comedy into the story, revolving around the futile attempts of a couple of keystone cop type of characters to identify and catch the murderer. They really weren't that funny, and they took away from whatever degree of suspense there might have been as we came closer to learning the killer's identity.
It's nothing noteworthy; very much a product of its times. (3/10)
Stephenson was good in his role, and Chester Morris (as crime novelist Neil Broderick) was decent enough as well. Those two aside, though, there really didn't seem to be a great deal of energy in this. Particularly disappointing were the attempts to inject a degree of comedy into the story, revolving around the futile attempts of a couple of keystone cop type of characters to identify and catch the murderer. They really weren't that funny, and they took away from whatever degree of suspense there might have been as we came closer to learning the killer's identity.
It's nothing noteworthy; very much a product of its times. (3/10)