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.
Mystery · Crime
