Murder, He Says

It’s hard to believe now, but Fred MacMurray was once the busiest actor in Hollywood. His ridiculous role in 1945’s Murder, He Says came just on the heels of his most famous dramatic turn in Double Indemnity. Yet as many comedies as MacMurray starred in, he never seemed to exude any natural comedic gifts, and in this daffy screwball affair he seems particularly shoehorned into the role. Murder, He Says derives most of its cornball humor from inflating the worst B-movie hillbilly stereotypes to almost surreal proportions. MacMurray plays a city-dwelling, bike-riding pollster named Peter Marshall, who works for the Gallup-like Trotter company ('looking for the modern way of life in rural communities' as he puts it) poking his nose around a family of violent backwoods rubes, the Fleagles, in search of a colleague who had recently vanished in the vicinity. Entering a sort of creepy Old Dark House meets Southern Gothic atmosphere, Marshall gets caught up in the Fleagle family’s deranged farmhouse shenanigans, which revolve around the mysterious whereabouts of $70,000 supposedly hidden on the property. Grandma Fleagle (Mabel Paige) knows the secret, but she’s been contaminated by an unnamed poison that gives its victims an eerie incandescent glow. And by the time Grandma finally snuffs it, the rest of the family is convinced she’s whispered the secret of the hidden money to Marshall. So Marshall spends the remainder of the film improvising cockamamie ploys to thwart the casual homicidal tendencies of the Fleagle clan. And to that end, the film’s second half is basically a star vehicle for the family’s carnival-freak eccentricities: there’s Mert and Bert Fleagle (both played by Peter Whitney) the bumbling shotgun-toting twin brothers, pistol-shooting Grandma, the bullwhip-cracking Marnie Fleagle (Marjorie Main), the perpetually delirious Elany Fleagle (Jean Heather), and escaped convict Bonnie Fleagle (Barbara Pepper) along with her imposter, Claire Matthews, played by Helen Walker. And last but not least, there’s Mr. Johnson (Porter Hall), Marnie’s hubbie, who’s a mild-mannered serial poisoner.  The bizarre barn-set denouement involving hayseeds and haybales leaves the viewer stuck somewhere between a Three Stooges skit and a Ma and Pa Kettle movie gone mad.  Although the film’s oddball premise certainly offers a window onto the proverbial 'old weird America,' Murder, He Says is hardly an overlooked classic crying out for rediscovery. Optional. (M. Sandlin).