A wise-cracking private eye is sent to celebrate his honeymoon in the divorce capital of the world, Reno, Nevada, to find a missing man. Along the way, he encounters suspicious characters an... Read allA wise-cracking private eye is sent to celebrate his honeymoon in the divorce capital of the world, Reno, Nevada, to find a missing man. Along the way, he encounters suspicious characters and a trail of dead bodies.A wise-cracking private eye is sent to celebrate his honeymoon in the divorce capital of the world, Reno, Nevada, to find a missing man. Along the way, he encounters suspicious characters and a trail of dead bodies.
- Dave Paulson
- (as George Lewis)
- Policeman
- (uncredited)
- Passerby Below Clock
- (uncredited)
- Alex
- (uncredited)
- Passerby Below Clock
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.
- Quotes
Gypsy Toland: I didn't kill her!
Humphrey Campbell: I didn't say you did, but you're on the spot. We're both on the spot--our fingerprints are all over the place.
Gypsy Toland: I got there just before you did. She was... you saw her.
- ConnectionsEdited into Who Dunit Theater: No Hands on the Clock (2021)
A strong cast of B movie stalwarts includes Dick Purcell as a bank robber named Red, and Astrid Allwyn as a dangerous female at the bar. George Watts is the comical yet crafty boss detective who drags our man Chester into the case by promising to buy Parker a fur coat when the case is finished. (Other familiar faces who appear in bits include Milburn Stone as an FBI man and Keye Luke as a cash-hungry fired house servant.)
The plot is, frankly, way too involved and packed with too many characters for it all to make a lot of sense. Among other story threads, it seems that both the FBI and the gang of robbers think that Chester is a fellow bank robber whom he apparently resembles greatly (but whom we never meet).
What are easy to follow, however, are the reasons we watch in the first place—little touches like Morris's fondness for milk contrasted with Parker's inability to drink it at all; the accordion that Morris repeatedly picks up but never gets around to playing for more than a measure or so; and, of course, the handless clock that our heroes can see from their hotel window. (A symbol of something? Perhaps it would have been in a movie that had had the time to develop such an idea.)
It's fast moving and fun. Having watched with moderate attentiveness, I can honestly say that I don't feel much moved by the actual plot, and I'm not particularly concerned about the meaning of the clock. However—I would like to ask the same question of Chester Morris and his accordion that the room service boy asked him early on in the picture: "Can you jive on that thing?"
Details
- Runtime1 hour 16 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1