The Kennel Murder Case started life in 1933 as a book by S S Van Dine. I read it back in the early 70's and have no memory of it. I never kept a copy when I purged books before I moved to Minneapolis and never picked up another to read again. You can read it for free on Project Gutenberg Australia. I read on the Wikipedia that the Vance character is an annoying guy with affectations and the books were seen as dated just a few years later. The movie Vance isn't that bad. Several people played him in 15 Vance films that were made. Most you can find on the Internet one place or another as well as on tv and dvd.
That same year The Kennel Murder Case came out Michael Curtiz directed the film version. Curtiz started directing in 1917 and he would go on to direct a lot of great movies until his death in 1962. TKMC stars William Powell as Philo Vance. Powell is another guy who had a nice long career in films and a nice bunch of rolls to play. He played Vance in three previous films and soon after this film he went on to one of his more famous rolls, Nick Charles in the Thin Man series. Vance has entered his terrier dog in a dog show. Archer Coe is a rival dog owner who winds up dead the next day. It looks like suicide but Vance isn't so sure. The coroner finds that a stab wound killed Coe, not the gun shot wound. The people around Archer Coe had plenty of motive to kill him. Coe's brother winds up dead, stuffed into a closet. So he's no longer a suspect. There's some running about but it's more of a talky picture. It's got a pretty good mystery, the film is well made, the story well told. Worth checking out. This is one of those 720p films that were posted recently. It looks a bit fuzzy but better than the one they had posted before.
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