The Girl Who Dared (1944)

Invitations have gone out to a party "ghost" party at the home of John Hamilton and Vivien Oakland. Peter Cookson poses as a mechanic at a gas station, and has to transport Lorna Gray and her brother, Kirk Alyn, to the house. There are several other guests attending, including a divorced couple (Veda Ann Borg) and our old friend Grant Withers. Hamilton announces that they did not send the announcements, and do not know who did, but they decide to go on with the party, anyway. A radio announcement tells that a Dr. Dexter has stolen a large amount of radium. The butler, Woodrow (Willie Best) serves the guests. Cookson knocks on the doors, saying that his car broke down, and there is no one at the garage to call. Hamilton invites him to stay.

Borg goes down into the basement, where she is frightened by a shadowy figure. She loses a shoe, and when they find it, there is blood on it. Despite all this, they launch their "ghost hunt." There is an old legend about the island concerning a pirate ghost. Sure enough, there is a figure in the wreckage of an old ship. Borg (who is playing a double role) is stabbed to death, and her twin sister blames her ex-husband. Gray tries to call the police, but the wire is cut. They send Best out into the storm for the police. The next few scenes involve building suspense by showing motives and opportunity for the murder. (The whole group is amazingly composed considering that one of their number has just been murdered.)

Gray wakes up in the middle of the night and begins an investigation on her own. The shoe that was blood-stained is missing. Best goes to the cellar for more brandy and discovers a body. It is the doctor who stole the radium. Then the guests learn that Cookson is not a mechanic as they supposed. Gray goes outside and finds Cookson walking about the grounds with a radioactivity indicator. It turns out he is an insurance investigator trying to locate the radium. They find hidden steps leading down into some sort of an underground cavern. They find the body of the first Borg. A shadowy figure attacks Cookson and flees. The underground passage leads into the house. They find the other Borg dead in her bed.

Cookson assembles the party and tells them that the murderer has been exposed to an opened container of radium. He has them move past the radio, because the radium would cause static. Cookson has the radio fake static when Withers walks by it, but it makes him confess. At the end, romance is blooming between Cookson and Gray - naturally.




Hamilton


Gray