Popular reviews

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  Review by eely ★★★½ 2

  “helen, you search the upstairs.”

  “oh no, I was never much of an individualist. if the upstairs must be searched, we’ll search it together.”

  “well that’s communism!”

  If you’re looking for a zany, screwball murder mystery extravaganza in which barbara stanwyck and henry fonda take turns slapping each other in the face and then immediately fall in love, then boy have I got a movie for you.

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  Review by Katy ★★★

  "I'd confess for a sandwich."
  "Confess what?"
  "I don't know, depends on the sandwich."

  I am SO here for the concept of finessing the police and breaking and entering in gowns and huge fur coats.

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  Review by sakana1 ★★½ 5

  There's very little to The Mad Miss Manton, the entire premise of which is "WOMEN, AMIRITE?", but watching Barbara Stanwyck and her posse of gal pals running roughshod over all of the men around them (very much including Henry Fonda's smitten newspaper man) makes it worth sitting through the film's odd timing and meandering plot. Plus, Stanwyck and Fonda have the kind of sizzling chemistry that seems almost out of place in such a silly movie, and it's a treat to watch them together in this trial run of sorts for The Lady Eve. (Also, Hattie McDaniel is great and doesn't take any shit.)

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  Review by Alice Stoehr ★★★

  In which Barbara Stanwyck plays a zany rich woman who solves a series of high society murders with her rich, zany friends while a cop and a newsman glare in disapproval. It's very funny, especially when the gaggle of mink-clad amateur sleuths crowds around a crime scene, talking over each other, getting distracted from the already frivolous whodunit plot. (One woman keeps trying to fix snacks no matter how many corpses are lying around. I empathize.) Mostly, though, The Mad Miss Manton made me curious about gender and class intersections in screwball comedy. It fits a trend you can see across Depression-era classics like It Happened One Night, My Mad Godfrey, and Bringing Up Baby: working-class men falling in love…

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  Review by tara (that cunt) ★★★

  "You're up to your beautiful hips in murder."

  i'm henry fonda falling in love with barbara stanwyck after she hog ties me and leaves me in an abandoned mansion

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  Review by nora ★★★½ 4

  i thoroughly enjoy any movie where the girlies terrorize henry fonda until he falls in love (especially when it’s barbara stanwyck terrorizing him). a hoard of women tie up and gag him multiple times in this movie, it is batshit 😌 also not enough people discussing how horny the cigarette-lighting scene in this movie is!!!

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  Review by 🥀 e m m é ★★★★ 6

  Goodness, what a delight!!! A madcap murder mystery romantic comedy is exactly my kind of film.

  Barbara Stanwyck sparkles in her role as a slightly outrageous heiress who stumbles onto a corpse while walking her retinue of fluffy dogs in the wee hours of the morning. When the police think it’s just a rich girl’s prank, she recruits her girl gang of swanky socialites to help her solve the crime!

  Henry Fonda’s newspaper man falls into the whole muddle and of course ends up completely smitten with her. They fight about everything, but their relationship is utterly adorable.

  Pardon me, but I’ll be running off to find The Lady Eve because I need more cute Stanwyck & Fonda!

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  Review by eely ★★★★

  henry fonda is equal parts himbo and “why I oughta” and barbara stanwyck is equal parts ditzy and “I just can’t decide who lights my fire” and their combo is absolutely to die for (hopefully your corpse doesn’t end up in a trunk or a fridge though!)

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  Review by Gentry ★★★½ 2

  “You’re a nasty creature aren’t you? But in time I’ll beat it out of you.”

  An RKO Stanwyck spooky comedy potboiler. Babs is Melsa Manton, a frivolous socialite known to the police for her “merry escapades” with her mink-lined gal pals. Violent simp journalist Peter Ames (Henry Fonda) believes her stories about the dead bodies she keeps stumbling upon in old houses and refrigerators. As he so eloquently puts it, she’s “up to [her] beautiful hips in murder.”

  Took me a minute to grasp the tonal mashup: farce, mystery and more than a bit of proto-noir lighting (courtesy of Cat People cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca) and a couple amateur detectives. I could have done without the half dozen fainting women, but there’s some fun stuff, an endless budget for furs, and a masochistically cute warmup pairing of Fonda and Stanwyck.

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  Review by kitsunegari101 ★★★½

  what the synopsis fails to tell you is that barbara stanwyck has an entire girl gang that i want DESPERATELY to be part of

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  Review by PUNQ ★★★½

  A bunch of bimbos in a dark scary house searching for corpses:

  
  Girl #1: "Helen, you search the upstairs."

  Girl #2: "Oh, no! I was never much of an individualist. If the upstairs has to be searched, we'll search it together."

  Girl #3: "Why, that's communism!"

  
  So odd to see Barbara Stanwyck in a murderous screwball comedy like this! Kinda dumb and not always perfect comic timing, but lots of comedy gold anyway! Especially with the one-liners!

  
  Henry Fonda falls head over heels for Stanwyck which starts a beautiful love/hate relationship between the lower class newspaper man and the upper-class dame as they stumble their way over corpses and near-assassinations. And he doesn't just have to deal with that. No,…

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  Review by AJ ★★★★ 2

  Barbara Stanwyck and her girlfriends - who are all notorious society pranksters - run around trying to solve a string of murders while the police all but frame them. If that isn't cinema tell me what is. Plus, it functions as a dry run for Stannie and Henry Fonda three years before The Lady Eve.

  If that's not enough then what's the matter with you, but, if you need more, the cinematographer is the genius Nicholas Musuraca, who shot Out of the Past and Cat People as well as other Val Lewton horrors. You know this man paints with the shadows and it elevates this, already, great screwball mystery even higher.