And back into the 1940s we go with a silly bit of spookier - Haunted Honeymoon. Robert Montgomery is a British nobleman who likes to play detective and his wife is a moderately successful mystery author played by Constance Cummings. Oh, and the guy who was famous for playing Disney’s 1950 Long John Silver (Robert Newton) is in there too. That’s right, this is campy AND British. So British, the couple brings their butler on their honeymoon. Buckle in, folks.
Just to give this some dignity, it’s actually based on a series of popular mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers, who apparently lived in Kingston Upon Hull. There’s a blue heritage plaque and everything! I lived there for 10 months in college and there was a history plaque I missed! It must’ve been near the sports arena. I didn’t go over there.
The couple are a bit like a sober Nick and Nora Charles who are a go-to consultant team for the local law enforcement. Both Peter (Montgomery) and Harriet (Cummings) have declared to give up murder and mayhem (fact and fiction) in their new life together. Naturally, a murder occurs while at their honeymoon cottage, one of those “everyone hated him so there’s a long list of suspects” murders.
The mystery naturally pulls the true crime couple back into old habits, but I will not give away the murderer. I will give away some of the more English hi-jinx which are meant to cause hilarity. For one, the dinner is not prepared upon their arrival and the butler (named Bunter which is very confusing to my stuffed up ears) is nearly smoked out by using the old stove of the cottage. For another, the chimney sweep has 7 layers of jumpers on and plans on clearing the flue while wearing a tie. A local offers them wine made of local vegetation. A parson keeps waving a dead stote at them. The same parson then shoots upward into their chimney. With all of these shenanigans, they don’t even find the body until act three of the film.
One of the aspects of Harriet being a writer is how her new upper class in-laws are rather mystified that she is a woman who makes money on such a droll little hobby. When she gives up crime novels, she says she could write about anything in the world which we all know as authors is a total lie. She’ll write what the voices in her head tell her to write. But it’s also just simply and clearly shown that deductive reasoning is how her and her husband’s minds work. They breakdown the real murder using the same questions Harriet uses to create a fictional murder. Eat your heart out, Jessica Fletcher!
