A Slight Case of Murder from 1938 is a screwball comedy that will tickle you in the dumbest ways but a definite laugh riot delivered by Edward G. Robinson.

During Prohibition Beer Brewer Remy Marco (Edward G. Robinson) sold his brew through strong-arm tactics basically equaling gangster tactics by his organization, but once Alcohol becomes legal he finds his profits falling off.  For one thing beer can be bought and consumed in saloons so the quality of what's available has risen and Marco can't compare to the other competitors.  In fact many think Marco's brew inferior to other beers but since drinking is legal, better beers are available.  After five years of losing money the back pay on the mortgage for his brewery is due and two suits from the bank, Post (John Litel) and Ritter (Eric Stanley) want payment immediately, partly because they know they can have a nice money-making brewery if they get Marco out.  The amount due is $462 thousand dollars, and Marco is desperate to find the cash but refuses to return to his former criminal tactics to get the money.  Since Prohibition ended Marco has gone ‘legit' and intends to stay that way, even though he has to take his daughter Mary (Jane Bryan) out of an expensive private school in Paris and bring her home.  It happens that Mary is in love with Dick Whitewood (Willard Parker), a nice guy from a wealthy family who wants to be a State Patrol Officer.  Dick and Mary have a natural relationship that is unfettered by ulterior motives or political or social maneuverings, something that Dick's father and Marco don't understand.  Marco takes Mary and his wife Nora (Ruth Donnelly) up to his rented mansion in Saratoga to figure things out but on the way he stops off by the orphanage he supports to adopt one of the worst boys named Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom (Bobby Jordan), a young kid who smokes, drinks and clearly has no respect for authority.  Marco believes he can turn the kid around and actually likes the boy because he is so much like himself.  At the mansion in Saratoga some gangsters and their leader Little Dutch are hiding out, as they have recently stolen $500 thousand dollars of payroll from the local bookies, but one of them gets greedy and shoots the others dead taking the money and hiding it under on the beds in a bedroom.  When Marco arrives and discovers the dead bodies Mary's fiancé Dick arrives in his policeman uniform to see her and the bankers descend for their money.  As Marco figures out the mystery behind the dead bodies and meets and greets Dick's upper-crusty father Al Whitewood (Paul Harvey) and manages to handle his creditors, he realizes the true quality of his beer product and comes to terms with his relationship to the police and his future as a legitimate businessman.

Easily one of the best comic interpretations of the criminal underpinnings driving the legalization of alcohol in the Prohibition era, A Slight Case of Murder is one of the better roles Edward G. Robinson played, clearly capitalizing on his tough guy image for comic results.  Robinson's Marco, the insensitive beer seller is a softy at heart and this is shown well in his response to all the things his adopted son Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom does, merely admonishing the boy with "Aw, you hadn't need to go and do that", clearly a weak response when the boy splatters beer all over an expensive baby grand piano, or when the boy steals Marco's watch, or when the boy lights up one of Marco's stolen cigars.

It's screwball comedy with an edge.  Damon Runyon, the screenwriter and one of the original authors of the Broadway play that it was based on, was very interested in showing how the upper class and lower class interacted and clashed on primal levels.  The gangsters in the film are all self-educated and rough around the edges and everyone else has a polish and refined edge.  This definitely one of the author's concerns, showing how crime was perpetrated by the undedicated lower class.

Edward G. Robin had a natural bent toward comic acting although he gained his popularity playing tough gangsters like Little Ceasar, and the knowledge of these roles allowed this comic perf to flourish.  But the support players get more of the laughter by reacting to Robinson's Marco straight delivery.

One stand-out performance is Bobby Jordan as Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom, the kid Marco adopts from the orphanage.  Jordan was one of the original Dead End kids and although his career fizzled later in life, his success at a younger age is admirable.  He has dead-on delivery and perfect comic timing as when Ruth Donnelly's Nora Marco looks up at one of the gangsters and asks: "Why isn't he in B-E-D?", and Jordan's Rosenbloom responds "Because I want more to E-A-T, you old C-O-W!"  We all wish we had had this kind of moxie when we were growing up.

There's the throwaway line at the party where Robnson's Marco says to Willard Parker's Dick Whitewood when he's trying to convince him to go up a flight of stairs with his gun drawn to take out some gangsters.  "Young man, you're wearing th unifom of your country- well anyways your state- you want these people to think that you disgraced it?!"

The screwball plot, sticking to formula, spins ever faster as the movie drives forward and Marco gets more involved in assuring that he manages to raise the $462 thousand dollars he needs for his mortgage, and also confronts the milquetoast father of his daughter's fiancé, and manages to move the bodies of Little Dutch and his gang from room to room to avoid discovery.

The ending is one of those perfect gems, filed with impossible ‘deus ex machina' moments that is such an outlandish coincidence but well timed and filled with pointed jokes that all hit the mark and are generated from the characters and the cause-and-result narrative, so they make sense. 

Along with the film a commentary track by professor of cinema studies at New York University, Robert Sklar and a wonderful little featurette called "Prohibition Opens the Floodgates", with archival footage, classic film clips, and interviews from folks such as Michael Madsen, Martin Scorsese, Talia Shire, and a host of other film historians, scholars, and writers about how the movies expressed the dry period in history.  There are also added attractions like a Newsreel form the period, and a Looney Toons cartoon called The Night Watchman.

The film is a lot of fun for classic screwball lovers and goes great with just about any snack you have.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older