The Kennel Murder Case

William Powell's fourth and final outing as S.S. Van Dine's dilettante detective Philo Vance. A Long Island dog-show society gathering ends in a locked-room murder when the universally disliked Archer Coe is found dead — apparently by suicide, except for the bullet in his head and the corpse of his dog found in a closet. Vance unpicks a tangle of rivalries, inheritances, and championship terriers. Directed at speed by Michael Curtiz for Warner Bros., it's widely considered the best of the Philo Vance pictures and one of the cleverest whodunits of the pre-Code era. The film is in the public domain.