Murder, He Says

Pete Marshall works for a public opinion survey company. When one of the company's men goes to a mountain town and disappears, Pete is sent in his place. He arrives at the Fleagle family's farm: the mother Mamie, her two enormous twin sons, and an old grandmother laid up in bed. The family is after a hidden fortune, and the grandmother has concealed its whereabouts in an embroidered sampler. Once Pete has gone into that house he cannot get out. The mould is comedy but the film keeps sliding into horror: poison, hidden passages, midnight chases, and a dog that glows in the dark. George Marshall directed. Fred MacMurray plays Pete and the part rests entirely on panic; Marjorie Main plays the mother holding the family together. Ninety-one minutes. The most interesting thing about the film is how easily Hollywood in the forties could mix comedy with dread, and how little it tried to explain that.