Leoni Haney
Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
Allison Davies
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Ella-May O'Brien
Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.
gridoon2018
It's been a while since I've rated a movie so low, and I hope it will be an even longer while before it happens again. There is cheap, and then there is "Midnight Manhunt"; this picture looks like it was thrown together in three days, in three sets, with three thousand dollars. As rival reporters looking for a missing body, William Gargan and Ann Savage will not exactly make you forget Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. And there are so many unfunny supporting characters gumming up the proceedings that even George Zucco, who plays it straight as the villain, cannot save the film. See a Torchy Blane movie instead. Any Torchy Blane movie. * out of 4.
mark.waltz
Weak comedy involving murder, criminals and missing corpses, all with a newspaper and a wax museum setting. George Zucco, the British Erich Von Stroheim, is in the first scene shooting an alleged crime figure and for the rest of the movie, he's hunting down the corpse which walked while still alive into the museum and ends up being lost. The comedy comes in the form of reporter Ann Savage and museum worker Leo Gorcey (of the Bowery Boys series) and their efforts to find the corpse and get it to the police so the murder can be solved. It's all pretty confusing and silly and ultimately it really makes absolutely no sense. For a movie made from the Pine Thomas division of Paramount studios, this proves after "One Body Too Many" and "Scared Stuff" that comedy was not their forte. They did mostly war movies, so it seems out of their element. Savage better the same year when she starred in the film noir "Detour". Zucco comes off unscathed as the villain. Leo Gorcey is, while playing Slip Mahoney, although with a different character name. It's adequate for an hour long time filler with a few amusing lines, but the plot is absurd behind belief.
dougdoepke
Fast-moving mix of comedic nonsense and creepy thick-ear, of the sort popular at the time. Seems everybody's trying to find the corpse of gangster Wells and hold onto it. Competing reporters Willis (gargan) and Gallagher (Savage) are trying to out-scoop one another, that is, when not romancing. At the same time, bad guy Jelke (Zucco) wants to hide the body to cover for his stolen jewels, while the cops are trying to figure things out and poor Miggs just wants some sleep. Complicated? Yes, but in an entertaining, if crowded, programmer style. It's not a whodunit, rather we wait to see how all the conflicting interests will play out.Apparently Gorcey's on leave from the East Side Kids, while furnishing his impudent brand of fractured English. Now if he can just figure out how to be a cool guy and light a cigarette. The wax museum setting is inventive, but someone should tell director Thomas that wax figures are not limber. Note too how much of the proceedings are filmed in half-light, probably to cover for the budget sets. For fans of statuesque Ann Savage, she shows a different side here from her definitive Detour (1945) spider woman. Happily, she also shows a lot of shapely leg near the end.Overall, it's a fairly nifty little programmer with a brisk pace and a number of 40's familiar faces.
Snow Leopard
There's no denying that this B-feature has its flaws, but it's kind of fun to watch. It's a crime drama with plenty of comic relief, with a solid cast that does pretty well with a story that could easily have fallen apart. The production is strictly low-grade, but they tried to make up for it in part with a lot of offbeat sets and dimly-lit scenes.The story reminds you of Hitchcock's "The Trouble With Harry", since most of the plot concerns the trouble caused by an inconvenient corpse. It's not, of course, as good as a Hitchcock movie, and its implausible aspects are not masked the way they would be in a better production, but it still gets some decent mileage out of the premise.Ann Savage does well as a young reporter trying to sort things out. She has the strong presence that she showed in noir features like "Detour", while this time being much more sympathetic. George Zucco strikes an appropriately menacing tone, and Leo Gorcey adds some entertaining comic relief.This is a good movie to watch when you just want to pass a pleasant hour or so with something entertaining that does not demand careful attention, and when you are prepared not to be too critical. With the right expectations, it actually works pretty well.
