Based upon a story by that unique novelist Harry Stephen Keeler it tells of three men who confess separately to a murder, are tried and convicted but on death row before they are all executed a criminologist tries to discover the real murderer by getting each one to tell their story while attached to a polygraph machine. So the film consists of three long flashbacks until the climax when everything is explained. It has a potentially interesting plot let down by a slow pace and bland acting. It does have the luminous Lotus Long but she is only in one flashback sequence which is a shame. The director Lewis D. Collins was prolific, helming films and serials from 1922 to 1956 but nothing that rose above the routine.
5 Reviews
Poor Mystery
boblipton14 March 2023
Conway Tearle has been murdered. Three men have confessed to the crime, and offered the gun each has claimed he did Tearle in with. The ballistics on each matches a bullet in Tearle's corpse. None of them will say anything more, but District Attorney Richard Tucker notes lazily he didn't need anything else to convict every one of them, and send them all to the gallows. But the situation is ridiculous. While there's no way of knowing which bullet struck Tearle first, any of them would have killed him instantly That means that two men are going to be killed for a crime neither had committed. So Ferdinand Gottschalk goes to Sing Sing with two pardons and a lie detector, and convinces them to tell what had happened.
It's an intriguing idea for a murder mystery. This movie is derived from Harry Stephen Keeler's book of the same name. I hope he wrote a mystery better than this one, because not only is Gottschalk's lie detector infallible (real ones never have been), but he comes armed with facts that are not revealed until after he makes his accusation, which makes this a cheat on the audience, even if you accept the legal positions.
The performances are pretty good for a Poverty Row movie, and the players are well known from elsewhere in their careers, even if they were not the draws they had been, or would become: Hardie Albright is a good performer away from the stultified roles he played for George Arliss' vehicles; Berton Churchill is good as an honest politician, and among the ladies, Mary Doran and Boots Mallory did all right for themselves elsewhere. But the essential unfairness of the answer to who did it rankles.
It's an intriguing idea for a murder mystery. This movie is derived from Harry Stephen Keeler's book of the same name. I hope he wrote a mystery better than this one, because not only is Gottschalk's lie detector infallible (real ones never have been), but he comes armed with facts that are not revealed until after he makes his accusation, which makes this a cheat on the audience, even if you accept the legal positions.
The performances are pretty good for a Poverty Row movie, and the players are well known from elsewhere in their careers, even if they were not the draws they had been, or would become: Hardie Albright is a good performer away from the stultified roles he played for George Arliss' vehicles; Berton Churchill is good as an honest politician, and among the ladies, Mary Doran and Boots Mallory did all right for themselves elsewhere. But the essential unfairness of the answer to who did it rankles.
Worse than a death sentence
F Gwynplaine MacIntyre8 April 2003
Harry Stephen Keeler (1890-1967) was the Ed Wood of detective novels. As Ed Wood did with low-budget movies, hack novelist Keeler ground out whodunits that are laughably bad yet exert a weird fascination in their badness. As with Ed Wood, certain themes turn up incessantly in Keeler's novels to a point beyond obsession. Keeler often ignored all the rules of mystery fiction: in one of his novels, the murderer turns out to be someone who is mentioned for the first time in the very last line of the novel! He often piled gimmick upon gimmick, until the gimmicks cancelled each other out: for example, a homicidal midget who disguises himself as a baby (plausible) but who commits his murders while piloting a helicopter, so as not to leave footprints (which makes his baby disguise rather pointless). Although Keeler was American (most of his novels take place in Chicago), he was first published in England. Eventually his plotlines became so contrived that English-language publishers would no longer take his work: his last several novels have only been published in Spanish and Portuguese translations. Keeler had a strange and tragic life: at one point during his adolescence, his mother had him committed to an insane asylum simply because she wanted to get rid of him; there is some evidence that he may have been subjected to one or more illegal operations on his brain during his captivity.
'Sing Sing Nights' is a low-budget movie based on Keeler's novel of the same name; although Keeler didn't work on the screenplay, the film preserves the inane plotting and absurd gimmickry of his unique style. At this comparatively early stage in Keeler's career, his plotlines still held some faint resemblance to reality, so 'Sing Sing Nights' is merely implausible... as opposed to his later novels, which were downright incoherent.
Floyd Cooper (played mostly in flashback by Conway Tearle) is a respected war correspondent who is secretly involved in gun-running and other crimes... until he is found dead. Cause of death: three bullet wounds in his brain, heart and spine ... fired by three different weapons! Any one of the bullets could have killed Cooper, but only ONE bullet actually did the deed. Which?
Three different men (Trude, McCaigh and Krenwicz) come forward, each admitting that he shot Cooper, and each claiming to have fired the fatal shot. All three men are arrested, tried and convicted for the same murder. All three men are sentenced to die in the electric chair in Sing Sing. (On the same night, of course.)
Into the death cell comes Professor Varney, world-famous criminologist. Because only one bullet actually killed Cooper, two of these men are innocent and must go free. (I don't believe a word of this, but it's all in the movie.) Each of the three men, in flashback, describes the circumstances which led to his decision to murder Cooper, and how he did the deed. We're meant to be kept in suspense for the final revelation, disclosing which man is the murderer and which two will go free.
Guess what? I don't care, and you won't either. The movie's central gimmick (lifted intact from Keeler's novel) sounds ingenious, but doesn't hold up to a glimmer of logic. I don't know much about U.S. criminal law from the 1930s, or forensic medicine ditto, but I strongly suspect that: #1) a New York coroner in 1934 would have no difficulty determining which bullet killed the victim; and #2) the previous point is moot, because the law would find all three gunmen culpable even if only one actually killed the victim.
This movie is brainless, but (unlike Keeler's novels or an Ed Wood flick) it's not quite brainless enough to be enjoyable in its brainlessness. All the actors give dead-earnest performances, showing no awareness of how awful this material is. Even usually reliable character actor Berton Churchill lets me down here. The pacing is terrible, the shot-matching is poor, the lighting is bad (probably on purpose, to conceal the cheap sets). The production values are wretched, without quite descending to the enjoyable cheesiness of an Ed Wood movie. If you're an Ed Wood fan who likes to read, I recommend that you seek out some of Harry Stephen Keeler's novels, which really are the literary equivalent of 'Plan 9 from Outer Space'. I don't recommend the movie version of 'Sing Sing Nights', and I rate this movie absolutely zero.
'Sing Sing Nights' is a low-budget movie based on Keeler's novel of the same name; although Keeler didn't work on the screenplay, the film preserves the inane plotting and absurd gimmickry of his unique style. At this comparatively early stage in Keeler's career, his plotlines still held some faint resemblance to reality, so 'Sing Sing Nights' is merely implausible... as opposed to his later novels, which were downright incoherent.
Floyd Cooper (played mostly in flashback by Conway Tearle) is a respected war correspondent who is secretly involved in gun-running and other crimes... until he is found dead. Cause of death: three bullet wounds in his brain, heart and spine ... fired by three different weapons! Any one of the bullets could have killed Cooper, but only ONE bullet actually did the deed. Which?
Three different men (Trude, McCaigh and Krenwicz) come forward, each admitting that he shot Cooper, and each claiming to have fired the fatal shot. All three men are arrested, tried and convicted for the same murder. All three men are sentenced to die in the electric chair in Sing Sing. (On the same night, of course.)
Into the death cell comes Professor Varney, world-famous criminologist. Because only one bullet actually killed Cooper, two of these men are innocent and must go free. (I don't believe a word of this, but it's all in the movie.) Each of the three men, in flashback, describes the circumstances which led to his decision to murder Cooper, and how he did the deed. We're meant to be kept in suspense for the final revelation, disclosing which man is the murderer and which two will go free.
Guess what? I don't care, and you won't either. The movie's central gimmick (lifted intact from Keeler's novel) sounds ingenious, but doesn't hold up to a glimmer of logic. I don't know much about U.S. criminal law from the 1930s, or forensic medicine ditto, but I strongly suspect that: #1) a New York coroner in 1934 would have no difficulty determining which bullet killed the victim; and #2) the previous point is moot, because the law would find all three gunmen culpable even if only one actually killed the victim.
This movie is brainless, but (unlike Keeler's novels or an Ed Wood flick) it's not quite brainless enough to be enjoyable in its brainlessness. All the actors give dead-earnest performances, showing no awareness of how awful this material is. Even usually reliable character actor Berton Churchill lets me down here. The pacing is terrible, the shot-matching is poor, the lighting is bad (probably on purpose, to conceal the cheap sets). The production values are wretched, without quite descending to the enjoyable cheesiness of an Ed Wood movie. If you're an Ed Wood fan who likes to read, I recommend that you seek out some of Harry Stephen Keeler's novels, which really are the literary equivalent of 'Plan 9 from Outer Space'. I don't recommend the movie version of 'Sing Sing Nights', and I rate this movie absolutely zero.
Did a movie ticket come with a road map?
mark.waltz23 August 2016
Warning: Spoilers
This fascinating disaster is told in so many flashback sequences, I wanted to consult H.G. Wells to determine exactly where I was and with whom as far as each of the three suspected murderers in this ultra convoluted film. Three men in prison are confronted by a psychiatrist to determine who the killer is. For some reason, it seems that one killer is covering for the others, and as thus develops, I had forgotten about who the victim was even though they kept reappearing in the never ending source of flashbacks. Each segment gets odder, and really crosses the line into silliness when it goes "Oriental" all of a sudden, complete with every laughable cliché. Even though it has a bit of a lavish look to it, the film just seems to go more bonkers until the absurd conclusion. The finale segment of the shrink and the paper doll cutouts just brought on one more "huh?" to go along with the rest of this film's absurd idiocies.
What are the odds?
bkoganbing26 July 2019
What are the odds that famous war correspondent Conway Tearle is shot and killed in his home three times by three men who tell of three very good motives
for doing this one in? Yet that is the plot premise in Sing Sing Nights.
In real life this would have been straightened by the District Attorney's office before going to trial on any of the three who all turn themselves in and confess to doing the deed. But all three are tried and all three convicted.
The three murderers are Hardie Albright, Ferdinand Gottschalk, and Jameson Thomas. Tearle was a real snake on many levels as you will see and no one could blame anyone. But there are laws.
It's not a bad plot premise, but this B film suffers from lack of direction and lack of production values. Imagine what Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain might have done?
In real life this would have been straightened by the District Attorney's office before going to trial on any of the three who all turn themselves in and confess to doing the deed. But all three are tried and all three convicted.
The three murderers are Hardie Albright, Ferdinand Gottschalk, and Jameson Thomas. Tearle was a real snake on many levels as you will see and no one could blame anyone. But there are laws.
It's not a bad plot premise, but this B film suffers from lack of direction and lack of production values. Imagine what Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain might have done?
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