Grade-D mystery programmer in underdressed sets. The director, Otis Garrett, tries to keep it running with some fast screen wipes, but it still feels much longer than its 68 minutes. Preston Foster tries to carry it almost single-handedly; it's hard to tell most of the supporting characters apart, because they look the same, they dress the same and they talk the same. *1/2 out of 4.

This messy crime club murder mystery suffers from tiresome clichés and stereotypical characters that just aren't interesting enough, even for a film running 72 minutes. This bottom of the barrel B film focuses on the whereabouts of a corpse, allegedly a hotel suicide. With detective Preston Foster trying to discover the truth of what happened, it becomes obvious pretty fast that the underworld has an interest in the whereabouts of the corpse as well, one obviously non-grieving mobster claiming that the corpse was his wife. This overly familiar plot, done so much better, succeeds in getting more convoluted as it goes along. The featured cast is second rate at best. A weak entry in the many series Hollywood studios put out weekly to bring in dime store novel fans. In this case, the film-goer deserved change on that dime.

Producer: Irving Starr. A "Crime Club" selection. Copyright 21 April 1938 by Universal Pictures Co., Inc. New York opening at the Globe: 8 May 1938. U.S. release: 22 April 1938. Australian release: 25 August 1938. 8 reels. 70 minutes.U.K. release title: Case of the Missing Blonde. Alternative title: Corpse in the Morgue.SYNOPSIS: A body is stolen from the city morgue. Why?NOTES: Second of the three "Bill Crane" series, all starring Preston Foster and Frank Jenks, and all based on Jonathan Latimer novels. The others: The Westland Case (1937), The Last Warning (1938).COMMENT: Jonathan Latimer's famous novel doesn't translate too successfully to the screen, despite the best efforts of all concerned. The trouble is that the plot is just too complicated. It's impossible to follow on a first or even a second viewing. Third time around, — following directly on the previous viewings and being armed with the solution, — I just managed to piece it together. Nonetheless, despite not knowing what's going on for most of the time, The Lady in the Morgue is a fascinating film. The setting is sufficiently bizarre, the action sufficiently fast-paced, the direction sufficiently stylish and the acting sufficiently charismatic to carry the audience along.One disappointment, however, is that the lovely Patricia Ellis has so little to do. She actually figures in only four scenes: the introduction in her apartment; a night-club (in which she wears an absolutely stunning gown) followed by a sequence at home; and the courtroom climax. Brash Preston Foster, on the other hand, is rarely absent. Jenks is okay as his sidekick, whilst it's great to see Barbara Pepper as a jaded beauty.Several set-pieces — notably a scene in the murdered girl's apartment, a coroner's inquest, a graveyard resurrection and a murder attempt at the morgue — keep the thrills coming at a pace that fortunately defies the lack of logic in the plot. Cortez's stylishly moody photography is a major asset.

1938's "The Lady in the Morgue" was the third Crime Club from Universal, and the second to feature Preston Foster as Detective Bill Crane, with Frank Jenks as his sidekick Doc Williams. An attractive blonde suicide disappears from the morgue, with Crane, on assignment to identify the missing corpse, under suspicion for the murder of the morgue attendant; meanwhile, Chauncey Courtland ('Wild Bill' Elliott) is searching for his missing sister, and two different gangsters are putting the squeeze on Crane, each one hoping his girl isn't the missing blonde. Considering all the subplots going on, things wrap up nicely, moving at a fast clip, with witty wisecracks galore, particularly when Crane is told to go down to the morgue: "think they'll take me?" Guaranteed to keep one guessing, and easily the best of the 3 Crane titles (preceded by "The Westland Case," followed by "The Last Warning"). The next Crime Club would be "Danger on the Air."