Super-Sleuth (Benjamin Stoloff, 1937)

Super-Sleuth is a charmingly silly horror-comedy (heavy on the comedy) that may be one of the earliest movies about the movie business. Most of the showbiz-themed movies in the earliest decades of film take place in the world of the theater, but Super-Sleuth's characters are Hollywood actors, studio publicists, and directors, and much of the film's action takes place on movie sets, on location, and in the offices of Apex Pictures, the fictional Hollywood studio employing most of our characters.

Jack Oakie (John Goodman's character's favorite actor in Barton Fink) plays Willard Martin, the self-absorbed star of a series of popular private eye films. His multiple public comments making fun of the police for being unable to catch The Poison Pen (an author of several poison pen letters threatening bodily harm to local citizens) and his boasts of knowing more than the police due to his experience playing a private eye have caused a bit of a PR crisis for Apex, exasperating studio publicist/Martin's on-off romantic partner Mary Strand (Ann Sothern) and enraging the LAPD. Instead of being conciliatory, Willard doubles down on his sick cop burns. I really enjoyed this aspect of the film. It warms my heart to see police get the business.

Willard claims he'll solve The Poison Pen crimes instead of the cops, unwittingly making himself a target of the criminal mastermind. The movie never makes it clear why the entire city is trying to find a guy who writes mean letters and why it's making front page headlines. I'm going to assume the criminal is also killing the people who receive the letters. Otherwise, it makes no sense, but I have a soft spot in my heart for nonsense. We do know he's definitely trying to kill Willard, since we see him take direct aim at the star with a pretty sweet umbrella-gun (the center of the open umbrella is the scope, the handle is the trigger), barely missing his target.

Willard spends the rest of the film avoiding murder attempts, trying to solve the crimes, shooting his latest private eye movie, alternately placating and infuriating the cops, trying to mediate a romantic triangle between an actress and two actors (one established, one working as an extra), amusing and exasperating Mary, and polishing and straightening his portraits and billboards. He's a busy guy. 

Super-Sleuth is often described as a mystery, but the movie reveals the identity of The Poison Pen in the first third. Let's just say a creepy professor and expert on crime named Herman (Eduardo Ciannelli) who advises Willard on his private eye movies and lives in a weird wax museum of historical crime and punishment may possibly be the guy. You may be up to something if you've turned your home into a wax museum of the macabre, is all I'm saying.

Compared to the classics of the period, Super-Sleuth is a minor achievement, but it's a solid, well-made, funny, entertaining movie, and the umbrella-gun is the bee's knees. I loved the behind-the-scenes-of-filmmaking aspects, too, with the location shoot for the film-within-a-film's police chase being especially great. We get to see the preparations, the planning, the direction, the action, and the mayhem that ensues when The Poison Pen starts shooting at the actors for real as they're shooting at each other with blanks. Very cool scene.

The only thing marring Super-Sleuth is some '30s-era racism with the character of Warts (Willie Best), Willard's personal assistant. Willie Best was often saddled with the stereotypical black servant character, afraid of everything. His character is a bit more developed in this movie and gets some decent lines and a few zingers, but he still has to do the fraidy-cat schtick forced on so many black actors of the era.

If you're a fan of movies about the movies, '30s Hollywood, and umbrella-guns, check out Super-Sleuth. I had a good time with it.