In this wonderfully atmospheric, creepy, classic 'dark old house mystery', complete with everything from secret passages to Edgar Allan Poe's fear of being buried alive, we definitely learn that, although in real life they've probably been around ever since Eve, the femmes fatales were also present in movies long before the term became popular as a characterization for fatally beautiful and sensuous women who lead men astray - usually in order to get into a large fortune...And that's exactly what Lilyan Tashman alias Laura Endicott does here: blonde and provocative, she turns one man's head after the other, turning them all against each other to kill one another, to inherit the large estate of her husband's aunt. She stops at nothing, and she thinks no one can stop her, and no one can resist her - but HERE she finally makes her big mistake: there IS someone who (even though with some difficulty, as the way he looks at her just before he takes her to the police station clearly shows...) CAN resist her; unbending, incorruptible Lieutenant Valcour (William Boyd)...A wonderfully enjoyable, suspenseful, entertaining mixture of daring pre-Code sensuality and good old-fashioned murder mystery, one of the best of its kind, with a great cast, stylish settings - and quite a clear 'message': Beware of dangerous blonds...!

1931's "Murder by the Clock" has remained a forgotten horror from the early 30s, but not by such eminent film historians like William K. Everson, who dutifully included it in his 1974 book CLASSICS OF THE HORROR FILM. Had it been made at Universal, no doubt it would be as well remembered as "Dracula" (which preceded it) or "Frankenstein" (which followed it), but Paramount did their share of terror classics too ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "Island of Lost Souls," "Murders in the Zoo"). The sultry and seductive Lilyan Tashman (Mrs. Edmund Lowe) epitomizes what the word 'vampire' meant to audiences prior to Lugosi, a huge star going back nearly ten years, whose life would sadly end from cancer just three years after she made this. Irving Pichel, as the halfwit son with the strength of a bull, preferred working behind the camera rather than in front of it; nevertheless, as an actor, only his memorable work opposite Gloria Holden in "Dracula's Daughter" can compare with his macabre characterization here. Comic relief is supplied by Sally O'Neil's maid and Regis Toomey's Oirish cop (she co-starred with young Lon Chaney in 1933's "Sixteen Fathoms Deep," while Toomey's next film would see him co-starring with Boris Karloff in Universal's "Graft"). No, Paramount rarely dabbled in horror during the 30s, yet there wasn't a single dud among them.

This is an excellent movie from the pre Production Code era that very well combines the detective gender with the horror one.Combining the graveyard setting with the old dark house, it has an atmosphere as creepy as any straight horror movie. The performances of all of the players are uniformly good.Lilyian Tashman is wonderful as the totally amoral con-woman, who manages to manipulate each one of the men she pretends to love into doing her killings for her while protesting that she didn't really MEAN for them to do that! William(stage) Boyd is superb as the tough, incorruptible police lieutenant who refuses to stop trying to learn the truth despite pressure and temptation by Tashman.Very much like Bogart's Sam Spade.Boyd reminds you in voice and somewhat in appearance of Randolph Scott.It is a pity that his problems with drugs and alcohol ruined his career and let to an early death.He was a great actor and might otherwise have rivaled Bogert and the rest as a tough, no nonsense leading man

Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde...and Murder By The Clock??? There's a reason this semi-horror thriller hasn't joined the ranks of those famous movies from 1931, and it's that this film is nowhere near the same level. It has some good things, but can't decide if it's a mystery (a shadowy figure commits a murder, and about five minutes later lets the audience know he did it!) horror (some mild Edgar Allan Poe Premature Burial stuff) or Vamp movie - the female kind, not the undead! The plot basically concerns Laura Endicott's (Lilyan Tashman) manipulation of the pathetic males she's lumbered with into each committing a murder in order to get her hands on the family fortune. It's fun to see Irving Pichel - after all he directed An American Tragedy and The Most Dangerous Game! - as the retarded brother constantly going on about killing people with knives and strangling them! And the film raises a few atmospheric moments. One or two of the cast moved on to Paramount's other horror show that year - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Murder By The Clock failed to set the box office bell ringing, probably because it lacks the new supernatural element of the previously mentioned horror flicks. The direction is nothing special and the pace is slightly leaden. But it ain't bad as these things go, and is worth a look.