Playboy Larry Blendon (<a href=">Damian O'Flynn) introduces his grandmother Stella Blendon (<a href=">Clara Blandick) to his fiancée, radio singer Virginia Berneaux (<a href=">Ramsay Ames). Despite Larry's record of broken romances and divorces, Virginia decides she will marry him. Virginia is slain that night and Blandon telephones his friend Philo Vance (<a href=">William Wright) to help find the killer. Even as they talk, the killer strikes again and Philo hears Larry fall dead. Philo begins his investigation with Alexis Karnoff (leon Belasco'), Virginia's manager, and the two go to Larry's home, where Stella tells them that the motive for the killing might be Larry's will that names the six women in his life as heirs and if any die before the will is probated, the others will divide the shares. They also learn that Katherine Corbett(<a href=">Phyllis Planchard), the first of Larry's wives, has been murdered. Suspicion now falls on Lorena Sims (<a href=">Vivian Austin), a former wife who has been a patient at a sanitarium suffering from a nervous ailment. All of the deaths have been by poison and Lorena had access to it at the sanitarium. Philo uncovers another piece of information that leads him to break into the Blandon home just as Stella is about to give Lorena a glass of warm milk. 1947's "Philo Vance Returns" concluded the brief three picture series from PRC, which ended the screen incarnation of the popular detective first played by William Powell. After two entries starring Alan Curtis, flanked by comic sidekick Frank Jenks, this casts in the title role frequent villain William Wright, who not only gets awakened in the middle of the night to solve the murder of a playboy's fiancée, but hears the caller get shot before he even hangs up! Within five minutes, there are already 3 murder victims, and more suspects bite the dust before Vance figures things out. Aiding Vance is Leon Belasco (a great improvement on Frank Jenks, although playing a different character), stealing every scene with his witty dialogue and funny accent, particularly his seduction of Iris Adrian through kiss-proof lipstick. Clara Blandick, best remembered as Auntie Em in the immortal "Wizard of Oz," portrays the playboy's loving grandmother, while seen only briefly are former Universal starlets Ramsay Ames and Vivian Austin, (the latter had a much larger role in the previous entry, "Philo Vance's Gamble"). Special mention goes to Eddie Dunn as the investigating lieutenant; he did many memorable cameos in the comedies of Laurel and Hardy, W. C. Fields, and Abbott and Costello. The very low budget occasionally calls attention to itself though, again, the mystery is quite good; some viewers may correctly guess the killer's identity but there's more here than meets the eye. Perhaps due to his untimely death from cancer in 1949, William Wright was hardly a well known actor, and does not excel in his only stint as Vance, no match for even Alan Curtis (Leon Belasco gets all the good lines). PRC's Vance films compare favorably to the three Film Classic 'Falcon' features from 1948-49 with John Calvert. Television adapted several movie detectives in its first decade, but not Philo Vance; even Perry Mason, with only six features at Warners, enjoyed a long run in its small screen version. I have now seen all three Philo Vance films that were made, on a very tight budget and schedule as well, in 1947. I think "Philo Vance's Gamble" is the best of the three, while "Philo Vance Returns" is the weakest. The plotting here is again pretty clever, especially in the way it fools you about the motive behind the murders, but a little too much screen time is awarded to the mostly unfunny, and occasionally crass (after finding a woman dead in her bathtub: "At least that's a clean way to die"), "comic relief" character of a Russian musical agent who becomes Philo Vance's sidekick; Frank Jenks was more successful in a similar role in the other two Vance films of the same year. This guy leaves little time for other supporting characters; second-billed Terry Austin, who shone in "Philo Vance's Gamble", has only two short scenes this time! Further down the cast list, Iris Adrian steams up her one and only scene: her stage name may be "Choo Choo" but after seeing her legs you'll be going "Woo Hoo"! ** out of 4.
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346 weeks ago