The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

With a runtime of just 73-minutes, this 1933 whodunnit, the fifth of fifteen films adapted from the detective novels of S S Van Dine between 1929 and 1947, has a very high body count - four, including the first untimely death of a prize show dog - and it is up to super-sleuth Philo Vance, played by William Powell, to catch the culprit, which he does despite the solution to the mystery being quite preposterous, revealed in a laughable denouement.

★★★☆☆

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The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

Remade in 1953 as House of Wax with Vincent Price, this superior 1933 original is not distracted by 3D gimmickry and instead delivers a deliciously creepy horror mystery that is, for its time, surprisingly risqué, featuring policemen reading pornography, a smart-talking no-nonsense female journalist who backchats her boss, body snatching, squirming embalmed bodies made noisy by their fluids, and even casual references to suicide!

★★★★☆

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