The Spanish Cape Mystery (film)

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The Spanish Cape Mystery
The Spanish Cape Mystery (film).jpg
Directed by Lewis D. Collins
Written by
Produced by M.H. Hoffman
Starring
Cinematography Gilbert Warrenton
Edited by Ernie Leadlay
Music by Mischa Bakaleinikoff
Production
company
Distributed by Republic Pictures
Release date
October 9, 1935
Running time
73 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The Spanish Cape Mystery is a 1935 American mystery film directed by Lewis D. Collins and starring Donald Cook, Helen Twelvetrees and Berton Churchill. It is based on the novel of the same name featuring the detective Ellery Queen. [1]

Contents

Plot

After unmasking a clever jewel thief for the benefit of his police inspector father, Ellery Queen and his friend Judge Macklin leave for what they hope will be a bachelor vacation on the California Coast. Macklin assures Queen that there is only one large mansion in the area where they will be staying. But when they arrive at their cabin, they find heiress Stella Godfrey bound and gagged to a chair.

Stella, while being driven back to her mansion explains that she has been resisting the efforts of all her family members to marry her off to the first available man. Only her uncle David seems to be sympathetic to her views. That night, a gunman abducts the two of them at gunpoint, left them tied in the cabin, and apparently escaped to sea in the family yacht.

When the grounds are searched, the dead body of society sponge John Marco is found on the patio, garroted to death some time ago and wearing only a bathing suit.

The next night, abusive husband George Munn is killed in a similar manner. His wife is the leading suspect. But Queen suspects the motive is inheritance money, not hate. Since the local sheriff seems to be going around in circles, Queen and Macklin interrupt their vacation to tackle the case.

Boston blueblood Leslie Court is then killed in his upstairs room even though he had been out of their sight for less than 15 minutes and all of the suspects were downstairs and their movements accounted for. Court, though ostensibly engaged to Stella, had also been courting one of the Godfrey family maids.

Stella receives a note that says if she wants her uncle back she should come to a deserted high balcony area of the estate. But Betty Blythe wanders into the meeting place area first, and she is pushed to her death by a masked assailant.

With Stella bravely acting as bait, the next night the killer enters her bedroom and walks into a police trap. It is the "missing" uncle Dave, who faked his abduction to divert suspicion from himself. Queen had learned from the family gardener that all the murders took place at high tide. Uncle Dave had been living on the "missing" yacht, and swam ashore at high tide time each night to commit the murders. For the first murder, he lingered too long and was stranded at low tide. He changed clothes with his victim; so he wouldn't look strange walking the streets in a bathing suit. He then dressed his other victims in bathing suits to keep up the misdirection.

Queen opines that while the first murder was committed for money, somewhere along the line Uncle Dave's mind snapped and he became a thrill killer who was even willing to kill the niece he loved.

Cast

Related Research Articles

Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murders. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the more than thirty novels and several short story collections in which Ellery Queen appeared as a character, and their books were among the most popular of American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. In addition to the fiction featuring their eponymous brilliant amateur detective, the two men acted as editors: as Ellery Queen they edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime, and Dannay founded and for many decades edited Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961, Dannay and Lee also commissioned other authors to write crime thrillers using the Ellery Queen nom de plume, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; several juvenile novels were credited to Ellery Queen, Jr. Finally, the prolific duo wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross.

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References

  1. Goble p.379

Bibliography