VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Steineded How sad is this?

SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

gridoon2018 It's been a while since I've rated a movie so low, and I hope it will be an even longer while before it happens again. There is cheap, and then there is "Midnight Manhunt"; this picture looks like it was thrown together in three days, in three sets, with three thousand dollars. As rival reporters looking for a missing body, William Gargan and Ann Savage will not exactly make you forget Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. And there are so many unfunny supporting characters gumming up the proceedings that even George Zucco, who plays it straight as the villain, cannot save the film. See a Torchy Blane movie instead. Any Torchy Blane movie. * out of 4.

zardoz-13 You know you're in for a breezy lightweight comedy during the opening credits of "Midnight Manhunt." The illustrations depict happy, upbeat cartoon characters, while the Alexander Laszlo score sounds bright and chipper. An infamous gangster who has been missing for five years perishes at the hands of a murderous thief. Nevertheless, the gangster manages to survive long enough to leave his hotel and die in an adjacent wax museum. A variety of characters find and lose the body throughout the action in his modest forerunner of the "Weekend at Bernie's" movies or Alfred Hitchcock's "The Trouble with Harry." The saving grace of this mystery-thriller is director W.C. Thomas' nimble pacing. The believable cast adds some humanity to this predictable potboiler. Nobody here found greater fame in Hollywood. George Zucco is sufficiently sinister as a pistol-packing hoodlum, while Leo Gorcey mangles the English language with such abandon that he could be Mrs. Malaprop's son. Here's an example of Gorcey's dialogue: "Do you not never read no newspapers?" When a cop believes that he has seen a dead gangster, Gorcey cracks, "He's suffering from optical delusions." Detective Lieutenant Hurley sums everything up succinctly, "Maybe I'm crazy. I've never been on a case like this before: trying to find a corpse that somebody stole." Afterward, he adds: "Who in the blazes would want a corpse in the first place?" Basically, the David Lang screenplay boils down to somebody meets corpse, somebody loses corpse, and eventually somebody gets corpse back again. This is the kind of serviceable nonsense that insomniacs would find tolerable.

MartinHafer This B-movie certainly will not be appearing on anyone's "must-see" list, though despite its silly plot and silly acting, there's something rather enjoyable about this cheesy little film. The movie stars a lot of familiar B-actors--William Gargan, Ann Savage and especially Leo Gorcey and George Zucco (the unofficial king of B baddies). There's even an appearance by the toupee-less George E. Stone---all great folks for lovers of these low budget films like myself.The film begins with the apparent murder of Stone--though he sure seemed resilient and seemed to linger forever! Later, though, when he is 100% DEAD, his body turns up and then disappears. Three reporters (Gargan, Savage and Gorcey) get mixed up in this and the cops suspect they had something to do with the killing. Of course, they didn't and it's pretty obvious that Zucco has something to do with this--mostly because Zucco ALWAYS is the bad guy!! So, it's up to these rather dumb reporters (especially Gorcey, who is practically subhuman) to find out who's responsible, convince the cops they didn't do it AND get the story.It's all very enjoyable nonsense. As for Gorcey, this is a rare non-Bowery Boys role and you'll either love him here or hate him--he certainly is not a subtle guy. I liked the way he masticated the English language. Oddly, however, despite being a dominant person in the first half of the film, he's barely in the last. Mostly, it's Savage and Gargan who carry this silly bit of enjoyable fluff. I say enjoyable because despite its limitations, it DID entertain and made me laugh--and that's all most B's were really intended to do.

Zontar-2 Odd, isn't it, how you'll rent or buy a minor title on DVD that you'd likely ignore if it appeared on, say, TCM? This obscurity at least looks promising: the cover's enticing - a hallmark of Alpha Video - and the cast features long-time low-rent bad guy George Zucco, Bowery "Boy" Leo Gorcey, and Ann Savage, the memorable harpy in the cult fave DETOUR ('45). The slight plot takes place at a decrepit horror museum - characters pass thru a wobbly turnstile constructed by shop class dropouts- and involves a corpse that assorted characters constantly move or misplace for silly reasons. For odious comic relief, they're dogged by a dimbulb detective who makes Inspector Clouseau look like Sherlock Holmes. For a bare bones production, the players work hard. Zucco has never been slimier, and master language mangler Gorcey is good for some weak chuckles. The script, however, ain't exactly THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY ('55). With sharper dialogue, this might have made a decent farcial stage play, but the characters' casual attitude about handling the corpse is more distasteful than amusing.