Listonixio Fresh and Exciting

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

MartinHafer In the early days of talking pictures, movies were rather awkward because the sound equipment was so cumbersome and antiquated. It was also awkward simply because directors and actors were used to making silents and making the acting seem normal and natural was an evolving process...and it's obvious in "The Thirteenth Chair" that it still needed a lot of evolution! The dialog is, at times, clunky and unnatural and the delivery often sounded like a stage production instead of a movie. To make it worse, the film had some of the absolute worst editing I've ever seen. For example, a man and woman are talking in the garden and yet the camera keeps cutting back to other folks in another part of the house...and you can still hear the lovers making small talk. Another example are times that folks have their backs to the camera for extended periods as they talked. Surprisingly, the director was Tod Browning...one of the best directors of the 1930s and the man responsible for some of the best horror films of all time (such as "Dracula" and "Freaks"). He obviously still had a lot to learn in 1929.This murder mystery is unusual because it begins AFTER some scoundrel has been murdered. In order to trap the unknown killer, a seance is being staged...and it's hoped that the murderer will betray themselves.The story is not too bad but it's obvious that it was a play first. And, instead of properly adapting it to film, it looks much like they just filmed the play...and poorly. Even with a chance to see and hear Bela Lugosi in his first talking film, it's a curio...but a dull one.

calvinnme This film is only a 5.x out of ten if you don't like the early sound films, in which case, what are you doing here? You get to see Bela Lugosi as a police inspector, two years before he becomes forever typecast in horror roles as a result of "Dracula", although his deep Hungarian accent in colonial India is unexplained. But that's alright, because there is also an mystic with a deep Irish accent who has somehow ended up in India and managed to raise a daughter without the same said accent. The mother and daughter have become estranged, but why and how are never explained.Lugosi's character is investigating a murder - two actually. At the beginning of the film, Spencer Lee, described by his own best friend as a rotter, has already been murdered by person unknown. Apparently Lee was quite a lady's man and generally just a bad guy all around, so any number of people could have killed him. The best friend, Edward Wales, suggests a séance conducted by the previously named mystic. Meanwhile, the son of an aristocratic family (Conrad Nagel as Richard Crosby) is having trouble with his fiancée (Leila Hyams as Helen O'Neil) who says she has no right to marry him. Richard thinks it is because she is a secretary and he comes from a rich family, but there is obviously something else troubling Helen a great deal.The séance is held in the Crosby home, and the participants see this mainly as an interesting diversion, but when the time comes for Wales to ask the spirit of his dead friend, Spencer Lee, who murdered him, there is a scream, and when the lights come on, Wales is dead with a knife in his back. Supposedly this was done by someone in the séance circle to prevent the spirit of Spencer Lee from answering his friend.Several other reviewers note Bela Lugosi as the reason to watch this one, but I pick Margaret Wycherly as the psychic. She plays one of the oddest and most intriguing characters of any era of film. She acts more like a tour guide in her friendliness than a mystic, and then proceeds to show everybody all of her tricks when she is faking as a means of proving that this time she is not faking. She actually solves the crime with the help of Lugosi's character, who, upon hearing her idea to expose the murderer says "What you propose is too horrible to contemplate – but we will do it!" She gives such an odd but likable performance it is a wonder she wasn't nominated for best actress. This early talkie is not too talkie - in that there may be quite a bit of conversation, but it is all for a purpose. It really is quite creative throughout and the plot twists will keep you guessing. I recommend it, just remember you are dealing with the limitations of very early sound film, which primarily was movement.

bkoganbing When sound came to the motion picture there must have been a scramble for written material of any kind for the studios. Once it was proved it could be done, the public wanted to hear their screen idols speak and they had to have dialog.What works on stage did not often work on screen and when The Thirteenth Chair was made the studios were still getting sound right. We got all kinds of dialog, but here it was all kind of static and dull. And the cast generally overacts in this filmTwo performers here stand out. Margaret Wycherly best known as the mothers of Alvin York and Cody Jarrett later on was in the original cast on Broadway when it opened in 1916. She plays a psychic medium who is brought in to solve a murder already committed. During the séance the guy who arranged the séance is also dispatched. After that the cops call in.Lots of mysteries always have that climatic scene where the detective gathers the suspects be it Nick Charles or Jane Marple. But this is a film where the whole film is that scene. The other actor is Bela Lugosi who in this mystery set in British India speaks that marvelous Hungarian as a Scotland Yard detective.Lugosi acquits himself well, but he's just so well known in those horror films I expected him to be the murderer.Everybody overacts, but they were learning on the job the art of acting in talking pictures.

michael.e.barrett Recently saw this enjoyable little curio on TCM. Adding to the comments of others on the matter of style, I was surprised to notice several examples of short graceful tracking shots forward or back, just to break up the sense of staginess. (The mansion has very smooth floors!) So it's not that the camera is absolutely static. But Browning avoids close-ups for the most part. What was odd is the editing at certain times, which seems way off. There's one bizarre moment when the actors are clearly gathered in preparation for when the director calls "Action," and then after a few seconds, they abruptly begin speaking to each other in mid-sentence. (I'd like to see someone do a whole movie like that!) There's an equally strange edit when Margaret Wycherley walks out of the frame to confront Bela Lugosi (a few steps away), and then we cut to Lugosi sitting in his chair waiting an awfully long time beside dead space for her to walk into frame. I wonder what that was about?