Robert J. Maxwell Great title, "The Spanish Cape Mystery." It carries a double meaning too. The location at which Ellery Queen and his elderly companion are vacationing is named Spanish cape. And the first murder victim among the dozen or so guests at the estate is found near the beach, wearing only bathing trunks, and covered by an opera cloak, which is some kind of cape, although not a Spanish one, as far as we know.It's pretty routine as these 1930s murder mysteries go. Donald Cook is Ellery Queen and Berton Churchill, a great windbag, is his partner. They put up at an estate on the California coast. The other guests are in cahoots or in conflict over money or love. The butler eavesdrops. The first body shows up shortly after Queen's arrival. Then, at twelve-hour intervals, two more bodies show up. The clues point all over the place. Ellery Queen solves the mystery not so much by detection as by fulgurating intuition.There's not much to be said about it. Cook is inoffensive as Queen. He wears a condescending smile, almost amounting to a smirk, as he watches the hapless Chief of Police try to untangle the web of clues and suspicions. Ellery Queen is sarcastically referred to by the cops as "Sherlock", "Philo", "Mr. Chan," and so forth. But he's not them, because there's nothing distinctive about Cook's Ellery Queen. He doesn't shoot dope like Sherlock, doesn't speak with an accent like Chan, and never gets tipsy like Nick Charles.It's an inexpensive entertainment, diverting for the audience. It couldn't have been more than that.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS**** In him being in love with the #1 murder suspect Stella Godfrey, Helen Twelvetree, in the case hot shot detective Ellery Queen, Donald Cook, who together with his pop Inspector Queen, Guy Usher, while being on vacation grudgingly takes on to solving the case that by the time it's over some half dozen people end up being whacked. It's the local Sheriff Moley, Harry Stubbs, who's more of a hindrance then a help to Queen who he feels that he's upstaging him and making him look like a fool, which in fact he is, in trying to solve the case.Queen realizes right from the start that the killer is mentally unbalanced, as well as seeing black spots before his eyes, quickly eliminates anyone of the sane suspects in the case. That takes a while with most of those sane suspects ending up dead thus ironically making Queen's job of exposing him that much more easier. Queen also realizes that whoever is knocking off the guests at the Spanish Cape summer resort is doing it to eliminate any live hairs to the deceased Walter Godfrey's fortune that's estimated to be $3,000,000.00.***SPOILERS*** Using Stella one of the last surviving members of Old, and dead, Man Godfrey's relatives as bait Queen gets the elusive killer out into the open, with him only dressed in bathing trunks, to be arrested by a squad of police lead by Sheriff Moley before he could do her in. It's in Ellery Queen noticing that all the murders were committed at high tide that had him finally solve the baffling case. In that way the killer after he murdered his victims can make his getaway on the beach and not leave any evidence, footprints, when the tied reseeds, that he was at the scene of the crime. A fact that the gracious Ellery Queen gave the credit to the bumbling Sheriff Moley who was up for election the following fall.

jonfrum2000 I gave this movie a try on YouTube, which is a real test. After all, I can always hit Pause and surf the web for something else. I finally gave up on this one at about 27 minutes, when the shouting, buffoonish detective drove me away.Let's have a look at it. The lead character, Ellery Queen, is on vacation and doesn't want to get involved. Now there's a cliché that was old when the movie was made. Unfortunately, I never find any reason to like Queen. He's just not played in an engaging manner. The fact that he - a young man - has gone on vacation for weeks with a guy who looks older than his father, just made me scratch my head. Was there really no other way to get him to the scene of the crime? Then comes the police detective, who needs to shout every line the script has given him. At half an hour in, I just wasn't hooked on the story, and I'm perfectly willing to write that time off to save myself from wasting even more.

tedg Wow, what fun. You might not like this if you think of detective stories as an excuse to parade a colorful detective. The guy in this case is nearly nothing at all. Flat jokes.But what a cool mystery! Its a mystery in the old sense, where things happen and you know more than the detective does, just enough to be ahead of him. And you can easily figure it out.A body is found by the beach at night. In wet swimming trunks not his own, wearing a woman's shawl. Its a remote house and there is inheritance involved. Very typical constraints and model of detecting. Very complex events we have to suss out. Why the trunks? Why the shawl? Another murder and trunks follows.There isn't a character here that you'll remember. But you'll have fun if you like puzzle-stories.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.