Overrated and overhyped

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The meticulously incompetent director: CLIFFORD SANFORTH. Muddled, impossible-to-follow screenplay: Joseph O'Donnell. Based on hare-brained ideas by Clarence Hennecke and Carl Coolidge. Photographed on a dishcloth by James S. Brown and Arthur Reed. Amazingly non-edited by Leslie F. Wilder (hardly a single shot matches).SYNOPSIS: Well, let's see now. Bela Lugosi evidently plays some sort of corporate spy who is willing to sell television secrets to a rival firm. Unbeknownst to us, he has a twin brother. This creates no end of confusion, both for the characters on the screen and the hapless audience. Although there is a hint that Bela might have a twin brother early on in the action, the movie is so scrappily edited that few viewers will take much notice of what seems an irrelevant close-up of a newspaper headline.COMMENT: Last night, on an excellent Grapevine DVD,I saw a really dreadful film called "Murder By Television". It was so badly directed and ineptly put together, I actually found it quite entertaining. But few other people would share my enjoyment. Most people would say, "Why are we watching this terrible film? It's absolutely the most incomprehensible, time-wasting movie I've ever seen. Everything about it is bad. There's not one single redeeming feature in the whole production. Even the photography rates as incredibly awful. The movie looks like it was photographed on a dirty dishcloth instead of a roll of film. And Bela Lugosi is so unattractively lit, he looks positively senile!" But of course to me, the atrocious photography, the hammy acting, the impossibly muddled plot with its ridiculous dialogue, and the downright incompetent direction, rate as an almost endless source of constant amusement. I always wondered what would happen if a director decided to use constant close-ups of the backs of people's heads instead of shots of their faces. Now I know. Yes, a fascinating exercise in creative misjudgments on a grand scale.

Bela usually gave so much more of himself than the script required. That's what made him so good. I laughed at one of the reviewers comments "Bela would appear in anything - as long as the cheque cleared". That's why I like Bela - he gave his all - from the most prestigious A film to the worst poverty row production. It also gave him the chance to play a diversity of roles - it was only later in his career that bad health and the need for money made him accept parts that were lampoons of his horror roles. Early in his career he alternated between chillers and quite normal people (the head of a film studio in "The Death Kiss" (1932), a really excellent programmer).Houghland (Charles Hill Mailes) has been offered $5 million for the rights to his invention - a television station that can pick up transmissions from all over the world - but he refuses!! Richard Grayson (George Meeker) fiancée of June Houghland (June Collyer) is asked to keep a lookout for trouble. Arthur Perry ???(Bela Lugosi) has been bribed with a fee of $100,000, to be the man on the inside and to try to find out Houghland's secret television blueprint. Houghland is preparing to give a short wave presentation. Just before it begins he is threatened by a shifty looking foreigner - Mendoza (Larry Francis), who threatens that if Houghland is not going to sell his invention the demonstration should not go ahead. It does go ahead - with a pretty boring song "I Had the Right Idea" - then Houghland gives a speech and shows that the demonstration is being shown similtaneously in Paris, London and China - then tragedy strikes as Houghland is killed via the television!!! The suspects are rounded up, suddenly everyone has a motive for killing the guy - the investigation is hampered by a Chinese houseboy, Charlie Chan's number one fan, and Isabella the maid (Hattie McDaniell). Perry is then found murdered, but June is convinced, along with Isabella that she had just seen Perry. She has - it seems the man who was murdered was Perry's twin but was using his name falsely. The real Arthur Perry is an F.B.I. agent and has an explanation for everything that has gone on. There are flashbacks used as Perry explains everything. It was hard to figure out which was the twin (you realized they were twins very early on, at the news-stand) as they both had to act suspiciously.Claire MacDowall look very good as Mrs. Houghland. She had been in films from the earliest days and was a Griffith actress. This was one of June Collyer's last films. She was one of the most beautiful ingenues and had a career that began in 1927 with such prestigious films as "Four Sons" and "Me, Gangster".

I bought a DVD with this film on it a few days ago for a dollar.I am watching it as I am typing this.It is a fairly good film.I had no idea television was kind of well known when this film was made.When I looked at the cover I was under the impression that this film was made during Lugosi's years with Ed Wood,I was surprised to find out that it was made in 1935.To me those years were the best time of his life and career, but I now know that he did get stuck playing some pretty crummy roles in films that were somewhat below his gifts and talents.The acting in this film is a bit stiff and the dialog is corny.But it is an enjoyable film for a "B" film.

I seem to recall being warned about this one in advance to count it among Bela Lugosi's worst films! Anyhow, my viewing pleasure with this film (if there was any to be had in the first place) was seriously hampered by the atrocious video/audio quality of the print I watched (which seems to come off of a TV recording), replete with missing frames (shortening its running time by about 6 minutes!) and practically looking as if it was shot in the 1900s or something! Still, I suppose with the proper script and performers this could have made for a decent Thin Man/Charlie Chan outing; as it is, it's merely dull with a capital D and fatally cliché-ridden. Lugosi fared much better in the similarly-themed INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (1933) which was a most pleasant surprise for me when I caught up with it late last year via Universal's W.C. Fields DVD set.