Perennial second-from-the-left-cop-in-the-station-house, George Guhl, has a featured role, would you believe, in Monogram's 1941 tale, "Murder by Invitation", which turns out to be a peculiar amalgamation of Mrs. Longfellow Deeds Meets the Cat and the Canary. With halfway competent direction and a halfway appropriate well- healed budget, this effort may well have turned out as sleeper of the year. The money is there all right, but Phil Rosen's direction is strictly from hunger. The picture's potential drama is never realized. Obviously left largely to their own devices, the players do what they can to salvage the film. Although inclined to over-act, I thought Sarah Padden carried off the main role with a fair amount of conviction, although other reviewers disagree. George Guhl was a big letdown, and I was also disappointed that Marian Marsh was simply pictured as just another pretty blonde in this outing and no longer the charismatic charmer of "Beauty and the Boss".

I won't rehash what the other reviewers have said, other than to say that most were a bit too generous. Even though this B-movie had a running time of only 67 minutes, it seemed to me more like 3 hours, as the whole story was so tedious. Everything about it is flat and stale - the production values, the acting, the writing, and especially the "humor". I am guessing it seemed old hat even in 1941. I gave it a watch because Marian Marsh was in it, and she was incredibly captivating in several of her films of the 1930's. Here she is mostly wasted. There is one basic principle shortchanged here, and it is one that I believe is basic to any kind of drama (comedy or serious, from wild fantasy to kitchen-sink realism) - the sense that those involved in the production - from the writer to the director to the actors - are playing for keeps, giving it their best. That doesn't happen here - everyone seems to be "phoning it in".

So does apparently eccentric matron Sarah Padden, the spinster matriarch of a greedy family who wants to put her in a nut house so they can get their grungy hands on her fortune of $3 million. She invites them all to spend a week in her mountaintop mansion where you know what starts to happen. You've seen this all before, but right from the beginning, this film's tongue is so far into its cheek that the laughter starts rolling as soon as the old dear takes the stand in her defense. Padden is adorable, insulting her family and outlandishly insufferable in-laws (which includes Minerva Urecal, the "poor man's" Marjorie Main) and even columnist Wallace Ford whom she admits to that she reads his column but didn't reveal it on the stand because it might hurt her case.While this plot line has been overdone (often very predictably), it has never been done so fun, and you can see elements of later comedies with the same theme ("Murder By Death" and "Clue") in its short 64 minute running time. A film so much fun deserves a higher rating because the laugh quotient is greater than normal. To say more would spoil the delights.

"Murder By Invitation" is what's often referred to as 'an old dark house film'. This is because quite a few films like it were made--films where a group of people find themselves at a spooky old house--and they are killed off one by one. Interestingly, this film goes far as even talk about this sort of film when one of the characters mentions early on that this reminds her of "The Cat and the Canary"--one of the earliest and perhaps most famous of the genre. I liked this gentle poke at this sort of film cliché. And, in addition to being an old dark house film, it's also a 'know-it-all reporter film'--another very, very popular sort of film from the era.The story is about a wacky old lady whose greedy relatives can't wait for her to die so they can get her fortune. The film begins with them unsuccessfully trying to have her ruled incompetent by the court so they can get the cash. When that doesn't work, she invites all these jerks to her home for a mysterious midnight meeting--at which point she says she insists they all stay a week so she can figure out which ones should inherit the estate. But, soon after they arrive, bodies start to pile up. So, by the end, it's up to this wacky old lady to work out the solution to the murders--and WOW is her plan nutty! While this film is low-budget and occasionally the writing and acting are not great, the overall picture is actually very good. Why? Because it's so darn irreverent in its sensibilities. I mentioned the one "Cat and Canary" comment above, but I also like the ways the film made fun of things such as the Hays Office, Ferdinand the Bull (from the Munro Leaf book) as well as Philo Vance and other film detectives. Well worth seeing--I almost gave this one a 7.Ferdinand Philo Christopher Hays