vincentlynch-moonoi This is quite a good film, certainly better than I usually expect from 1933.First off, it is fast-paced. You won't get bored.Second, the premise is that modern technology (such as it was in 1933) can solve any crime...provided you have open-minded police investigating the crime. This "new" technology is constantly featured as the story progresses.Third, there's some pretty good acting here.On the negative side, this isn't a story where they give you clues so that you can begin to figure out who the murderer is. Instead, it's one of those where you learn facts right along with the police. That may sound good, but it always makes me wonder if they are just making it up as they move forward, rather than that they have it all planned out when they started the script. So are they plot twists, or are they screenwriters just saying, "Okay, what do we do next?" George Brent is very good here as a thinking detective. Margaret Lindsay was good as a murder suspect and love interest or Brent. Poor Eugene Palette...an amusing character actor who, in this film, plays a sort of dumb detective; not his best role, but okay. Always glad to see Henry O'Neill, a fine character actor who played a police inspector here. A different role for Hugh Herbert, still an odd ball, however, as a bail bondsman. Unfortunately, Ken Murray is here as a newspaperman; I never understood the attraction; he's a drag on the film.This is as good a crime drama as I've seen from these days. Less stereotypical as I film than most crime dramas of the era. I liked it.

kidboots After a couple of years of exciting, stylized gangster action usually depicting the mobsters as colourful, quirky individuals - enough so that a poll taken in the early 1930s showed that gangsters were high on the list of who the man in the street wished he was, J. Edgar Hoover got involved. He was alarmed that his F.B.I. department was not looked on with the proper respect and went about changing the way the public viewed officers of the law. By 1932,33, it was all about law and order with gangsters playing a very supporting role: new characters made their mark - reporters, gossip columnists and lawyers!!"From Headquarters" was exactly that, with an emphasis on police procedure and forensics and fortunately Warners was able to make it a showcase for their bevy of character actors - Henry O'Neil is the stolid Inspector Donnelly, Hugh Herbert is the used car salesman for the bail bond business, Murray Kinnell is Horton the enigmatic butler, Eugene Palette in another of his gallery of irascible detectives, Ken Murray a fast talking reporter and henpecked Hobart Cavanaugh, playing against type, as Mugs Manson, a crime boss who knows something vital about the crime but is not listened to. He is a "person of interest" in the murder of Broadway playboy Gordon Bates (who else but Kenneth Thomson). George Brent (at his very dullest) is Lieut. Jim Stevens called in to investigate and shocked to learn that his old flame, showgirl Lou Winton (lovely Margaret Lindsay)is the girl in the picture, supposedly engaged to Bates although she strenuously denies it. Forget Brent and Lindsay, Edward Ellis is terrific as the forensic officer with a mad gleam in his eye who is just itching to get his hands on a good old fashioned murder!!Just to relieve the procedural tedium and to show you that it is really a pre-coder, Bates is discovered to be a drug addict and Dorothy Burgess has a "way out" scene as Dolly White, an agitated hop head (whose performance of crazy laughter is worthy of "Reefer Madness") - she also saw Bates at his apartment and clocked him on the head with a statue. This fellow was knocked on the head by so many people, did he really need to be shot as well?? Robert Barrett was just a fantastic character actor, equally at ease playing detectives, butlers and in this case Mr. Anderzian, a shifty foreign importer who is involved in the most exciting scene in the movie. Also interesting how the police obtain his fingerprints - he thinks he is pretty nifty but he doesn't reckon on an ungloved hand on a polished wooden desk!!

Neil Doyle GEORGE BRENT doesn't display much enthusiasm for his role as a police detective who finds that his ex-sweetheart (MARGARET LINDSAY) is the chief suspect in the murder of a wealthy playboy. There are several suspects under police grilling and all of them tell their stories in brisk flashback technique that keeps the plot spinning in all directions so that all options are on the table in guessing "who done it." It's a ploy that doesn't work well here. A more straight-forward approach would have worked better in keeping the plot from getting too cluttered. By the time we reach a conclusion, the viewer is left hoping the story is over once and for all. What does work is showing the behind-the-scenes methods the crime labs perform in solving a case.It's a programmer given what little life it has by a capable cast of Warner supporting players including Ken Murray, Hobart Cavanaugh, Dorothy Burgess, Eugene Palette, Theodore Newton and others and benefits from brisk direction by William Dieterle.Summing up: A more polished script would have helped and George Brent seems too detached on this occasion to make much of his detective role.

bkoganbing I'm betting that George Brent got the lead in From Headquarters because Pat O'Brien had not arrived at Warner Brothers. O'Brien was cast in the lead in the very similar Bureau of Missing Persons and he fit the part of a detective so much better.Still and all Brent does all right with the part as one of two detectives assigned to the murder of a well known man about town. Only this particular man was seeing Brent's former flame Margaret Lindsay and she's a suspect.Brent and Lindsay get good support from Eugene Palette who is carrying over his Sergeant Heath character from Philo Vance and Henry O'Neill as the chief inspector.Two characterizations that should be noted are Robert Barrat as a rather sophisticated, but inpatient suspect who does in his own alibi and Hobart Cavanaugh as a safecracker who really manages to get himself murdered at police headquarters.One guy I don't think belonged was Hugh Herbert who brought his 'woo woo' act into a serious film as a wacky bail bondsman. I guess someone at Warner Brothers thought he'd be good comic relief, but not here. Also Dorothy Burgess as another murder suspect was way over the top.Look fast and you'll see Frank McHugh right at the beginning of the film as one of a group of prisoners being brought into the station in a paddy wagon. He gets a line to speak and his voice is unmistakable.From Headquarters is a not bad B picture that played well on a double bill with their more well known gangster stars.