'The Mystic Hour' is an uneven mess

The Mystic Hour (aka "At Twelve Midnight") (1933)
Starring: Charles Hutchison, Lucille Powers, Charles Middleton, Montagu Love, and Edith Thornton

Director:  Melville Delay

Rating: Five of Ten Stars

When the heroic Robert Randall (Hutchison) is chasing down a thief, he meets the beautiful Mary Marshall (Powers), and it's love at first sight. Their future together is threatened not only by Mary's corrupt ward (Middleton) who wants to cover up the fact he's stolen her inheritance, but also by the vengeful criminal mastermind, The Fox (Love).

"The Mystic Hour" opens with a really nicely done, moody and soundless sequence of a burglary... but it's all downhill from there. There's a nice idea at the heart of this film--with family intrigues crossing with the criminal underworld--but it's boring and muddled in the way it's executed and performed by a cast that seems to be suffering under poor direction or maybe just bad at ad-libbing. On more than one occasion, the actors and actresses seem confused as to what they are even doing in a particular scene.

One interesting aspect of the film is the choice of actor to play it's hero--Charles Hutchison may be the least attractive romantic lead in a film we're supposed to take seriously that I've ever come across. I can't decide if this a head-scratching move or a piece of brilliant casting. Perhaps he was cast for his ability as a stuntman (assuming he did his own stunts), because the action scenes of this film are by far its best moments, even if they are almost ruined and made ridiculous by the undercranking.

Aside from the too-brief action sequences, there's not a whole lot to recommend "The Mystic Hour" and it barely managed to earn the lowest possible Five of Ten rating. I think even the director knew he had a film that was in trouble--exciting action bits but boooooooring everything else--and an effort was made to liven things up with scenes of a pretty lady wearing  varying degrees of very little. (It's a time-honored tradition that one, which has been the fallback position of B-movies since the invention of the camera up to the present day.)