When a series of bizarre murders occur on the estate Professor Bertrand Dillard, District Attorney John Markham calls upon super-detective Philo Vance to solve the case.
The most interesting aspect of the otherwise static The Bishop Murder Case, is its mystery which plays out like a giallo thriller, with each murder tied into a Mother Goose nursery rhyme and performed by an unseen assailant, whose hands are covered with black gloves. Like many a giallo the psychological motivation behind the murders doesn't hold water at its denouement, but the mystery itself works on an intellectual puzzle level quite well.
Basil Rathbone would seem to make for a perfect Philo Vance, but he seems rather bored with the role, as if he didn't want to be stuck playing the same character for multiple movies (ahem!). Nonetheless Rathbone utilizes some of the visual deductive skills that would be put to use again a decade later. Clarence Geldart make a fine District Attorney John Markham (in one scene Vance and Geldart are sarcastically refered to as Holmes and Watson). James Donlan plays Sgt Ernest Heath as a complete idiot who would be more at home in an Abbott & Costello picture (incrediblely, and without apparent irony, Vance refers to him as the best sergeant in Manhattan under Markham).
Visually static and witten without a sense of humor (the Philo Vance S.S. Van Dine created, as an obnoxious intellectual dandy, is missing here) The Bishop Murder Case falls far short of the high point of the Philo Vance series, The Kennel Murder Case and as such would probably appeal most to fans of Philo Vance and/or students/fans of the dawn of talking pictures.
The most interesting aspect of the otherwise static The Bishop Murder Case, is its mystery which plays out like a giallo thriller, with each murder tied into a Mother Goose nursery rhyme and performed by an unseen assailant, whose hands are covered with black gloves. Like many a giallo the psychological motivation behind the murders doesn't hold water at its denouement, but the mystery itself works on an intellectual puzzle level quite well.
Basil Rathbone would seem to make for a perfect Philo Vance, but he seems rather bored with the role, as if he didn't want to be stuck playing the same character for multiple movies (ahem!). Nonetheless Rathbone utilizes some of the visual deductive skills that would be put to use again a decade later. Clarence Geldart make a fine District Attorney John Markham (in one scene Vance and Geldart are sarcastically refered to as Holmes and Watson). James Donlan plays Sgt Ernest Heath as a complete idiot who would be more at home in an Abbott & Costello picture (incrediblely, and without apparent irony, Vance refers to him as the best sergeant in Manhattan under Markham).
Visually static and witten without a sense of humor (the Philo Vance S.S. Van Dine created, as an obnoxious intellectual dandy, is missing here) The Bishop Murder Case falls far short of the high point of the Philo Vance series, The Kennel Murder Case and as such would probably appeal most to fans of Philo Vance and/or students/fans of the dawn of talking pictures.
"My revenge has spread over centuries, and has just begun!"
