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Why so much hype?

Simply A Masterpiece

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Despite some unfortunate comedy relief which tends to shatter the atmospheric mood so carefully built up by photographer, Mack Stengler – fully half the film is photographed in eerie darkness – this one emerges as a moderately exciting mystery thriller. Not the least of its intriguing aspects is how the star of the picture, who is killed in the first five minutes, is going to be revived. The situation itself is compelling, the plot devices offbeat and William Beaudine's direction – including an ingenious 350 degree pan – a considerable cut above his usual take-it-or-lump-it average. The cast is capable – in fact, Helen Parrish makes a really attractive heroine – and by Monogram's stingy standards, production values are quite fair.

This is a neat B thriller which rises above its Z grade studio. Even for a remake, this complex thriller remains fresh and entertaining today. There is something to be said for one-shot only director William Beaudine's method in many of his films and here, the actors all meet the challenge. The pace is quick, the dialog crisp and the low-budget pretty much hidden thanks to professional technical work. Yes, it lacks the polish of the major studios as well as a well-known cast, but what it lacks on that front, it makes up for in fun.The original film ("The Thirteenth Guest") starred a young Ginger Rogers in the dual role of a young heiress and an impostor. This version puts Helen Parrish in those parts as she recalls a dinner party from 13 years before where her Grandfather Morgan made an announcement regarding the future of his estate before dying. The Morgans are indeed a greedy bunch, and before the night is over, a few of them will be joining their grandfather in the family crypt.The plot certainly was not an original one but twists and turns in the plot, a great deal of humor and the quick pace makes this even better than the original. Adapter Tim Ryan also plays the detective and is also remembered as the husband and vaudeville partner of Irene Ryan, T.V.'s Granny.

A young woman's grandfather hosts a dinner party for thirteen guests, and he mysteriously dies. Thirteen years later, the woman believes that someone connected to the fatal party is trying to kill her.I had never heard of this film before, and I doubt very many people have. Which is a shame. It has a good pace, a good story, and wraps up in around an hour. This is the kind of film anyone could enjoy.In some ways, it has the feel of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", but it is its own story and should not be written off as a derivative narrative. Well, unless you consider it derivative of the previous incarnation, "The Thirteenth Guest" (1932). As I have not seen that version, I cannot comment.

A young girl arrives at her ancestral home and is promptly murdered-- -or is she? Twelve years earlier the murdered woman, as a little girl, had attended a birthday party for her dying grandfather. Thirteen partygoers were invited but only twelve attended. The thirteenth guest was death.Now, in the present, the original twelve guests are members of the family fighting over the will and someone wants the money badly enough to kill for it. Detective Dick Purcell is called in to solve the crime, aided by comic sidekicks and the usual inept policemen who only seem to inhabit "B" mysteries. Directed by William "One Shot" Beaudine, this 60 minute quickie is a darn good version of the Armitage Trail mystery and manages to be a little better that its 1932 predecessor-----though for some reason the 1943 film is much more difficult to see.