The Torso Murder Mystery (1939) User Reviews

The Maguffin

[boblipton · 5/10 · 10 December 2017]

I admit I was in a sour mood when I sat down to watch this movie, but I don't think that affected my opinion. It's a murky, overly complicated film in which various detectives/spies, including suave Romily Lunge and beautiful Tamara Desni are trying to solve a complicated mystery around what they are calling "the Torso Murder." It all starts when Bruce Cabot steals.... well, he steals the Maguffin, really. The Germans want it, the British want it back, but it's still the Maguffin and only the fact that the movie was released during the War meant it wasn't intended for catching tigers in the Scottish Highlands. There are some scenes that strain credulity, like the way that everyone shows up, entirely by coincidence so far as I can tell, at the same tiny night club, which offers a very dramatic confrontation.

In the end, the story switches gears several times, so that what story the film makers wanted to tell, what conclusion they wished to offer, remains murky. The movie viewer may know what happened, but the people in the film themselves may still be looking for the Maguffin.

Lame Spy thriller

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 9 July 2012]

Bruce Cabot plays a spy at a boat factory who steals a blueprint from the factory he works in.Having copied it he asks the Nazis for £4000 instead of £1000.There is a shot,we think he is dead.half an hour later he reappears as he had killed the Nazi agent.There follows i slightly confusing ill written story full of clichés,and the plot full of holes.For example.The police raid a nightclub where Cabot is being held by the Nazis.The police all rush in and as there is nobody guarding the door Cabot rushes out.The nightclub is the most interesting part of the film as there is a table of women only who are quite clearly not interested in men.The film ends when the spies nest goes up in flames with Cabot and his wife perishing in the flames rather than be captured.Cabot shoots his wife before the flames consume them.The chief Nazi speaks with a ridiculous German accent.The film is just plain silly.Incidentally the continuity isn't much good.Early on we see a telegram dated August 1939.then we have a newspaper shown with a date March 1939 and then one January 1939 !

A lot of confusion about nothing

[clanciai · 7/10 · 8 March 2022]

You never see or understand what this is all about. Some secret documents are copied that you never see or hear what they are about - some secret weapon, it seems, concerning some secret U-boat or something. If you can't follow the plot, which probably nobody can, just relax and sit back and at least enjoy the great night club scene with many lovely ladies both entertaining and performing exotic dances. The music is just for effects. Hitchcock used to make films like this in England, but they at least had a story to tell and could be identified, but all that Hitchcock clarity is missing here, getting drowned in different confusions, now and then someone killing someone and getting killed. The finale with a great fire consuming the entire set-up is dramatic indeed, and for once there is no happy end, as the lovers don't get away and least of all with the £4000 they tried to get for their trouble. Those invaluable documents that everyone was so awfully greedy about never turn up and never land anywhere - we shall never understand what they were all about.