Getting old can surely help a movie's entertainment value, as this low-budget very traditional murder mystery offers ready-made camp content. I attended innumerable premieres of extreme flops over the decades, and it's a fact that people are often quite forgiving many years later when nothing (money) is on the line -I would cite "Heaven's Gate" which I saw in NYC at its disastrous first public showing as a prime example.
The almost constant array of cliches and corny elements (most notably attempted comic relief of the cop detective's sidekick insisting over and over and over "Don't call me Watson!" burlesque routine) are fun over 90 years after they were recorded. And what's wrong with having fun at the movies?
For me, the barrage of clues, a gimmick still very much in vogue (see: Daniel Craig in that new and popular series of "Knives Out" films, which by the way is the weapon of choice in "Sinister Hands") is fun, and I was able to use them to guess the killer correctly quite early on. And the lengthy list of suspects, played by nonenties (with the exception of the sinister swami played by the great Mischa Auer) was quite easy to follow via adequate stereotyping. Nothing could be cornier than the arrogant behavior of the police captain/detective (Jack Mulhall) and his gathering everyone in a room to confront them and explain everything leading up to fingering the killer!
The almost constant array of cliches and corny elements (most notably attempted comic relief of the cop detective's sidekick insisting over and over and over "Don't call me Watson!" burlesque routine) are fun over 90 years after they were recorded. And what's wrong with having fun at the movies?
For me, the barrage of clues, a gimmick still very much in vogue (see: Daniel Craig in that new and popular series of "Knives Out" films, which by the way is the weapon of choice in "Sinister Hands") is fun, and I was able to use them to guess the killer correctly quite early on. And the lengthy list of suspects, played by nonenties (with the exception of the sinister swami played by the great Mischa Auer) was quite easy to follow via adequate stereotyping. Nothing could be cornier than the arrogant behavior of the police captain/detective (Jack Mulhall) and his gathering everyone in a room to confront them and explain everything leading up to fingering the killer!