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

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

bbmtwist I thoroughly enjoyed Murder At The Vanities, a film I'd only heard about in passing, but now thankfully, it is part of my collection.Brilliantly conceived and executed by a wonderful ensemble with every role perfectly played. Dorothy Stickney does deserve a special nod as the maid. She is unforgettable.I've rarely heard Kitty Carlyle sing, knowing her only from What's My Line? And the Song Of Norway cast album. She does very well as the female lead. This is the fifth film of Carl Brisson's I've seen and as usual, he is charming and debonair, with an effervescent personality and a lovely voice. Good use is made of the always dependable Jessie Ralph in a pivotal supporting role and Gertrude Michael as the villainess is a rare find. McLaglen and Oakie make great sparring partners as respectively, the homicide detective and the stage manager, trying to keep an opening night running smooth despite multiple murders off-stage.Songs: Cocktails For Two; Where Did They Come From?; Live And Love Tonight; Marijuana; Ebony Rhapsody.Lucille Ball, Ann Sheridan and Alan Ladd are to be glimpsed as extras, both Ball and Sheridan multiple times.Act One ends about 51 minutes into the action and my print ran a total of 1:29:30.An absolute delight from beginning to end. I'm astounded it is not better known to the movie public. Don't miss it!

GManfred This one is for fans of old Hollywood movies, Pre-code fans in particular. All the stars, and this type of movie entertainment, are long gone. If you are under the age of, say, 40, this is not your cup of tea.That leaves the rest of us, and for us this is a delightful way to spend 90 minutes. There is a lot to recommend this picture; the stars, among them Jack Oakie, Victor McLaglen, Duke Ellington, Gertrude Michael and a very fine actor in Carl Brisson, who may have been miscast. He has a good singing voice and puts over "Cocktails For Two" pretty well, but he has a distinct accent and seems uncomfortable in his star turn here. For a better look, watch Hitchcock's "The Manxman" (1928) which is a silent but shows his talent off to better advantage.The story itself is a clever mixture of murder, comedy and music. Be warned that the murder mystery part is not taken too seriously, but is a genuine mystery until the murderer becomes very obvious to the viewer. The musical part is uneven with some strange production numbers that are extremely interesting (Sweet Marijuana, Ebony Rhapsody, etc.) wrapped around Cocktails For Two. The costumes - or lack thereof on the chorus girls - are genuinely shocking for 1934. Not for nothing is this labeled a Pre-Code film.Taken separately, the elements of this picture are too lame to stand on their own, but taken as a whole, it works. "Murder At The Vanities" is more than just a curiosity but a look at a form of entertainment whose time was up years ago, but still fun to watch for those of us who can appreciate it.

MartinHafer This film is a very strange amalgamation of two types of films--the Busby Berkeley-style musical (like 42ND STREET, FOOTLIGHT PARADE and GOLDDIGGERS OF 1933) combined with a B-mystery. And, on top of that, the film has Pre-Code sensibilities that would shock most today. The newly strengthened Production Code was enacted in 1934 and this one snuck in just before it was adopted. As a result, a lot of surprising material got into the film, such as a song and dance number called "Marijuana" as well as the skimpiest costumes you can find in showgirls during the era. Heck, making them totally naked wouldn't have been that different than what you see here! Purely because of its Pre-Code excesses it's worth seeing! Now is this weird concoction worth seeing other than for lovers of Pre-Code films? Well, yes, but only if you have a high tolerance for lots and lots of singing and dancing. The film abounds with one enormous production number after another and to be quite frank, other than Marijuana, the other songs are amazingly forgettable. So is the dancing, unless you really love trying to sneak peeks at all the exposed flesh--trying to see if you can catch sight of something a bit more! As for the mystery, it is interesting but unfortunately it's obscured by all this singing. However, most of the characters (such as those played by Jack Oakie and Victor McLaglen) were enjoyable and helped to obscure the odd casting of Carl Brisson despite his heavy accent. His singing was just fine, but when it came to romance and acting, he did seem like a very unlikely actor for this film.Overall, it's a passable film but a real treat for those who love to see and marvel at the very loose morals of the Pre-Code films. They just don't come a lot looser than this!

tedg This is one of the most interesting old movies you will ever see.Its designed to shamelessly display what are billed as the most beautiful women in the world — excepting its star, Kitty Carlisle, who looks like a train wreck comparatively. There's no nudity in the modern sense, but its all about young bodies and refreshingly not large breasts.The form is peculiar. Its half a stage show — patterned after real shows by a real theatrical pimp. The other half is a murder mystery in which two deaths occur and are solved while the opening night show goes on.The mystery isn't much. There's no detecting involved and its purpose is to allow us to know a few characters, every one of them repellent in some way, except for the anchor of the thing. Every girlie movie has a girl that is the center of illusion and in this one its Toby Wing playing one of several dumb blond stereotypes, this one more of the Betty Boop type: squeaky and solicitous, ignorant of when she is being ignored or even laughed at.The mystery does involve some sinister Germans and Americans who take matters into their own hands. It was between the wars with the Germans, and Hitler was newly the "fuhrer." Its the show that's the interesting thing here. The numbers aren't as polished as you might expect, but they are among the most interesting you'll ever see.One is a song about sweet marijuana where the backdrop is seven peyote buttons played by nude girls in blossom bottoms.Another is very strange and makes sense if you note the antiGerman subtext. Its a battle of music between that great American invention of jazz (led by Duke Ellington himself) and some "German" old stuff, played weakly here. Its led by Franz Lizst, accompanied by ghostly and bloodless aristocrats. The American piece clearly wins, ending with a dance which is sort of a combination between ordinary stage choreography and black boogie woogie.Its the only time I know in that era where black and white women dancers dance together. And the black women are every bit as lovely. Its shocking for the time, this celebration of the American spirit of woman. It ends by the Lizst character machine-gunning the Americans, killing all.The first number is about the girls themselves, "where do they come from?" Its simply about where these lovelies originate and has them migrating from the east and the west through the doors marked with the famous (and quite real) motto; "through these doors pass the most beautiful girls in the world." They pass through the doors and are transformed into nearly nude fruits of the sea and packaged cosmetics for us (the male viewers) to consume. Its quite overt.But to me the most interesting visually was a number which had our haplessly inept and ugly couple on an island singing. They are surrounded by waves made of feathers, undulated by scores of women: all longtressed blonds. Since they are credited as "chlorines," I suppose it matters that they are artificially blond, more submissive perhaps.Its not photographed as well as it could have been, but its about as cinematic as you will get to this notion of vast pools of sexually available women, a sea of pulchritude. That it was set up in the previous number with women in vaginally opening clamshells, shows that the designer of this thing surely knew what he was doing.One of the girls was Beryl Wallace, an Austrian Jewess with whom the man behind this was in love. Lucille Ball is also in there too.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.