Watch The Gracie Allen Murder Case For Free

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This black and white film with Gracie Allen is very funny.She is on a picnic and meets a man named Bill who later is accused of killing a convict just let out of jail.She sings and has a really beautiful voice when she is not adding confusion to her singing. The film is just full of comedy mostly by her. She has the ability to talk funny and confuse people with her babble like on the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.She tries to help Bill by going into an apartment that might have clues to the man that was murdered. This apartment scene is so funny. She stumbles, falls, crashes into furniture in the dark mostly out of fear. She gets attached to a piece of furniture she thinks is a person following her and wrestles it to the ground. She gets tangled in drapes, sees a woman in the mirror and gets scared and does not realize she saw herself but thinks it is another another woman in the dark room. You will gets lots of laughs, some very stupid moments but also very funny.See the film or download on YouTube --> The Gracie Allen Murder Case 1939 --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=658fHZLgyoQ

There are two ways to approach this movie. If you take it as a mystery, and a chapter of the "Philo Vance" series, it's only OK and rather sketchy. But if you take it as a comedy, it works much better. Gracie Allen is a great comedienne. I wouldn't exactly classify her character as "dumb"; she simply has her own stream-of-consciousness "logic" about everything, which baffles everyone around her. She has a lot of very funny lines here ("Were you ever a Girl Scout, Bill?" - "What would I do with a bunch of girls?" - "Well, if you don't know, I'm not gonna tell you!"), and a few bits of equally funny physical comedy: the highlight may be the scene where she imitates Philo's mannerisms as he's looking around a room for clues (the final gag of the film goes on too long, though). And there is an underlying sweetness about her that just puts a smile on your face. It's a pity her only other experiment with the mystery-comedy genre, "Mr. And Mrs. North", is so hard to find today. **1/2 out of 4.

This film's been getting trashed pretty hard, which is a shame because it's actually a lot of fun and Gracie Allen shines in it. OK, so it's not the most complicated mystery, but it does have some suspenseful moments, especially the climax which gives new meaning to cigarettes being hazardous to your health. The film's real charms come from Gracie Allen, whose scatterbrained antics generate a lot of laughs. Warren William is also perfect reprising his role of Philo Vance (Fido, to Gracie) and hilariously playing straight man to Mrs. George Burns.I'd advise anyone who panned this film to give it another chance. You may be surprised.

Everyone dislikes this picture. Especially George Burns, who had the good sense not to appear in it. (His part was re-written to accommodate Kent Taylor). Gracie, of course, was stuck. Her good friend, S.S. Van Dine, had written the novel just for her. So who else could play the title role? ZaSu Pitts? Billie Burke? Perhaps Alice Brady might have given it a twirl had she not gone all serious in In Old Chicago.Well, actually, on approaching the movie a second time, I found it not so bad after all. Not riotously funny, mind, but tolerably entertaining at worst and quite enjoyable at best. The climax is even reasonably suspenseful.Production values generally come well up to the mark. The support cast is great. Warren William (who played Vance in 1934's Dragon Murder Case) makes a delightful straight man, Ellen Drew impresses as the heroine, H.B. Warner has a grand time as the lawyer, and it's hard to ignore Jerome Cowan as the slimy Mirche.Aside from its over-extended, hands-on fade-out, Green's direction has enough pace to overcome most of Gracie's flat-footed business and dialogue. And although we are blinded by an outpouring of light every time the camera focuses on the said Miss Allen, photographer Charles Lang does manage more than a few pleasingly atmospheric effects.