Taking the place of Robert Donat who pulled out at the last minute is Robert
Montgomery whom we read happened to be in Great Britain and was rushed by MGM into Haunted Honeymoon. Montgomery plays the aristocratic British detective Lord Peter Wimsey who is married to Agatha Christie like mystery writer
Harriet Vane played by Constance Cummings. They make a great team in the
mystery solving game. And it's a game to Montgomery because without it he'd be
one of those P.G. Wodehouse silly aristocratic types. Although he did serve in
the Great War where he acquired batman now turned butler Seymour Hicks.
Montgomery and Cummings have just married and are on the way to spend
their honeymoon at the childhood home of Cummings. The new owner having
rented it to them.
The new owner ain't a popular guy and he's killed and body found the next
day and it's like the Wimseys just can't get away from homicide. It's like Nick and Nora Charles solving mysteries as an afterthought.
This film was adapted from a play by Wimsey creator Dorothy Sayers. Lord
Wimsey never quite made it here as a popular character the way Agatha Christie's sleuth characters have. Perhaps Donat would have been better in
the lead.
In any event the Wimseys seem more like Jonathan and Jennifer Hart than
anyone else. Like Wimsey, Jonathan Hart solves mysteries as an afterthought.
Good, but not a great film from MGM's British studio.
