This was another film on a dollar DVD I picked up the other day. THE MOONSTONE was another, and it also contains MURDER BY TELEVISION . MIDNIGHT MANHUNT will be of interest to genre fans primarily for its cast and wax museum setting. Cast includes George Zucco, Leo Gorcey and Anne Savage. The plot consists of the police and various parties chasing the corpse of a recently shot gangster around a wax museum, as it keeps reappearing and being moved again, as corpses are wont to do. The whole thing is pretty poorly motivated; Zucco has a Mysterious Reason for wanting to find the corpse, but it's unclear why Savage, a reporter thinks that knowing where the body is and maintaining possession of it will help her get a scoop, or why Gorcey thinks he has to get rid of it quicky to stay out of trouble (the cops know he is uninvolved), or why the cops have apparently pulled out all stops to find the body. They know the guy is dead; finding the body is just procedural. And I'm not sure Zucco's reasons make sense in the end, either. The film is definitely cheap; the wax museum looks to be mostly mannequins with semi-exotic costumes on. The film makes up for this by swiftly panning past the exhibits, practically never focusing on them, and keeping the whole place dark. Zucco plays his standard villain and does it well. Gorcey plays his standard East Side character (named Clutch here), a bit better groomed and with the malapropisms turned up to eleven. Worthwhile for fans of either actor and reasonably atmospheric, though it just screams "Second Bill".
