Directed by: Clifford Sanforth

Starring: Bela Lugosi, June Collyer, Huntley Gordon, George Meeker, Henry Mowbray, Charles Hill Mailes, Claire McDowell, Hattie McDaniel, Allen Jung

STORY

Professor James Houghland has developed a revolutionary new method of transmitting television signals around the world — an invention that could change communications forever and make its owner an enormous fortune. Powerful business interests desperately want the technology, but Houghland stubbornly refuses to sell.

Now he is ready to demonstrate his remarkable invention before an assembled group of scientists, businessmen, family members and interested observers.

Then, during the demonstration, Professor Houghland suddenly collapses.

He is dead.

And this is no ordinary death. Houghland has been murdered — apparently right in front of everyone — and somehow the mysterious new technology of television may have played a part in killing him.

Suspicion quickly falls on the people surrounding the professor. There are business rivals who wanted his invention, associates with secrets of their own and plenty of people who might profit from Houghland's death. Among those caught in the mystery is Dr. Arthur Perry, played by Bela Lugosi, while Houghland's daughter June becomes romantically involved with Richard Grayson, a man whose own connection to the battle over her father's invention raises still more questions.

Then another murder deepens the mystery.

And Bela Lugosi has another surprise waiting for us.

Lugosi plays not one but two roles in Murder by Television: Dr. Arthur Perry and his twin brother Edwin Perry, who becomes instrumental in uncovering the extraordinary method behind the crimes.

Part murder mystery, part science-fiction thriller and part technological time capsule, Murder by Television is particularly fascinating today because it was made when television itself still seemed like something from the future. In 1935, American audiences were years away from having television sets routinely sitting in their living rooms. The idea that pictures and sound could be transmitted electronically across enormous distances was still astonishing enough to become the centerpiece of a murder mystery.

Add Bela Lugosi, a revolutionary invention, industrial espionage, mysterious deaths, twin brothers, suspicious scientists and a killer who may have discovered how to turn television into a murder weapon, and Murder by Television becomes one wonderfully strange little piece of Golden Age cinema.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
BELA LUGOSI TIMES TWO

Bela Lugosi doesn't play just one character in Murder by Television — he plays two.

Lugosi portrays Dr. Arthur Perry as well as Arthur's twin brother Edwin Perry. The dual role gives audiences an opportunity to see Lugosi outside the supernatural horror image that had already made him famous and places him instead inside a technological murder mystery.

TELEVISION WAS STILL THE FUTURE

This is what makes Murder by Television such a fascinating historical curiosity.

When the film was made in 1935, television was still experimental technology. Regular commercial television broadcasting in the United States had not yet begun, and television sets were certainly not ordinary household appliances.

To a 1935 movie audience, television wasn't old-fashioned technology.

It was astonishing new technology.

The filmmakers were essentially making a murder mystery about the future.

THE TELEVISION EQUIPMENT WAS WORTH MORE THAN THE MOVIE

Here's a wonderful AINTOID.

Contemporary production reports cited by the American Film Institute indicate that approximately $75,000 worth of television equipment was used during production.

The reported cost of making the entire movie was less than $35,000.

That means the television equipment appearing in this modest independent production was reportedly worth more than twice the cost of the movie itself.

AND IT WAS REAL TELEVISION EQUIPMENT

The elaborate machinery seen in the film wasn't simply invented by Hollywood prop designers.

Actual television equipment was brought into the production, giving today's audiences a fascinating glimpse at genuine technology from television's experimental era.

What looked like science fiction to many moviegoers in 1935 was actually part of the emerging television revolution.

BELA LUGOSI MEETS TELEVISION

There is a wonderful bit of historical irony in casting Bela Lugosi in a movie built around the mysterious new technology of television.

Lugosi had already become a screen icon through Dracula in 1931. Decades later, television would help introduce Dracula and Lugosi himself to entirely new generations of viewers through late-night horror broadcasts and television movie showcases.

Here, however, Lugosi is staring into television's future before anyone could have imagined just how important that medium would become to his own screen immortality.

HATTIE McDANIEL IS HERE TOO

Among the supporting players is Hattie McDaniel as Isabella.

Four years later, McDaniel would play Mammy in Gone with the Wind and become the first African American performer to win an Academy Award.

Her appearance makes this little Bela Lugosi mystery an unexpected stop in the career of another enormously important figure in Hollywood history.

MURDER MEETS SCIENCE FICTION

Although Murder by Television is fundamentally a murder mystery, today it also feels like an early science-fiction film.

The mystery revolves around an emerging technology whose ultimate possibilities were still unknown. Television could transmit images across enormous distances — but what else might it eventually be capable of doing?

Could it transform the world?

Could someone manipulate it?

Could someone even use it to commit murder?

In 1935, those questions could sound genuinely futuristic.

A BATTLE OVER THE NEXT GREAT TECHNOLOGY

At the center of the story is more than murder.

Professor Houghland possesses an invention that powerful commercial interests desperately want to control. He refuses to sell, creating a battle over who will possess a technology capable of changing an entire industry.

Nearly ninety years later, that struggle over ownership of revolutionary technology feels surprisingly modern.

BELA WITHOUT THE CAPE

By 1935, Bela Lugosi's name was permanently connected with Count Dracula. His performance in Universal's 1931 classic had transformed him into one of cinema's most recognizable horror stars.

But Lugosi's career extended far beyond vampires.

Murder by Television lets him trade castles, coffins and supernatural terror for laboratories, inventions and murder investigation — while still allowing him to bring that unmistakable Lugosi presence to the proceedings.

THE MOVIE HAD ANOTHER TITLE

Murder by Television has also circulated under the alternate title The Houghland Murder Case.

But AIN has to give the filmmakers credit for choosing the better title.

In 1935, putting the word TELEVISION in a movie title immediately promised audiences something modern, mysterious and futuristic.

AINTOID: AN EARLY INDIE

Murder by Television was produced by Cameo Pictures Corporation, far outside the lavish production machinery of Hollywood's largest studios.

With a modest budget, compact running time and an enormously ambitious technological premise, it is exactly the kind of resourceful independent filmmaking that existed alongside the major studios throughout Hollywood's Golden Age.

Small movie.

Big idea.

That sounds pretty indie to us.

AINTOID: LESS THAN AN HOUR AND NO TIME TO WASTE

Murder by Television runs only about an hour, yet somehow manages to squeeze in a revolutionary invention, corporate intrigue, romance, industrial espionage, multiple murders, a police investigation, identical twins and Bela Lugosi playing double duty.

Whatever else you may say about it, this movie certainly doesn't waste time.

AINTOID: TELEVISION WOULD WIN

The characters in Murder by Television are fighting over whether Professor Houghland's invention might transform communications.

We know the answer.

Within a generation, television would become one of the most powerful forms of communication and entertainment in the world. Millions of television sets would enter American homes, and Hollywood movies themselves would eventually become an enormous part of television programming.

That gives this strange little 1935 mystery something its filmmakers could never have planned: we are watching people speculate about a technological revolution that we already know is coming.