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.

Funny how you don't have wax museum pictures anymore. They seemed to be a staple product back in the day, with pictures like 1933's "Mystery of the Wax Museum" and 1940's "Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum". One might consider 2005's "House of Wax", but that doesn't count because Paris Hilton was in it. "Midnight Manhunt" doesn't have 'wax' in the title, but it gets some mileage out of the theme with the presence of The Last Gangster Wax Museum. I had to scratch my head over that actually, as I couldn't figure out what the reference was supposed to represent. Probably not important.At the center of the story is a corpse, compliments of George Zucco, who murders a fellow criminal to procure a quarter million dollars worth of stolen diamonds. He could have left well enough alone, but for some reason decided he needed to get rid of the body. (It's explained later on for anyone willing to buy it, but I don't have that kind of dough.) This could have been your standard Forties crime programmer, but the presence of Leo Gorcey added an offbeat comic element to it. Gorcey uses a line about having 'optical delusions' that I'm sure I heard in one of his Bowery Boys flicks, but he outdoes himself with this one - "You are now gazin' on the nucleus of a neurotic". Seems he was mixing up his movie genres.The picture's real focus though is on reporter Sue Gallagher (Ann Savage) and her on and off romantic rival Pete Willis (William Gargan). Gallagher discovers the body of mobster Joe Wells on the museum staircase, and figures to cash in on a scoop and a five thousand dollar payoff for proving Wells' whereabouts, dead or alive. It was curious to me how Zucco's character Jelke followed a trail of blood spots from Wells' apartment to the wax museum and the hot shot police force couldn't have done the same. Zucco seemed just a bit too refined to get involved with murder and mayhem here, but all that changed when he used the butt of his gun to knock out Miss Gallagher. I had to replay that scene twice, thinking I had witnessed an optical delusion.

"A dead body is discovered in a wax museum and two rival reporters compete to break the story in this fast-paced, tough-talking crime caper. Renowned criminal Joe Wells is shot in his hotel room and stumbles into a wax museum, where office boy Clutch (Leo Gorcey) sweeps the floor and butchers the English language," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis, like he does in the "East Side Kid" movies ("I figgered this whole thing out by a process of mental reduction")."Feisty reporter Sue Gallagher (Ann Savage) discovers Wells' body and rushes to file the scoop, but is interrupted when her part-time lover and news colleague Pete Willis (William Gargan) learns of the story. Tensions flare up even more when Wells' killer (George Zucco) corners Sue in search of the corpse, unaware that Clutch has found it and moved it out of the museum!" "Midnight Manhunt" wastes an interesting cast and setting in a careless execution.*** Midnight Manhunt (7/27/45) William C. Thomas ~ William Gargan, Ann Savage, Leo Gorcey

There isn't much to say about this one. It involves a body (which should be decomposing) being dragged around by a series of people. There are a couple of reporters who use absolutely no common sense in the process of trying to use the body to get a scoop. There's Leo Gorcey, playing the Bowery Boys character, with the malapropisms and the general insensitivity. George Zucco is running around, trying to get his hands on the body. Keeping a low profile probably would have protected him, but this doesn't occur to him. Everything is silly and far fetched and probably played well in a theatre on Saturday afternoon as a bit of escapist drivel in the forties.