The Night of the Party – 1934 | 61mins | Thriller| B&W

Plot Synopsis

Ruthless newspaper owner Lord Studholme gives a dinner party in honour of a foreign princess. When a party game of murder organised by Studholme ends with the host actually murdered, it seems that each guest has a motive for wanting him dead.

Michael Powell reluctantly accepted Night of the Party for Michael Balcon as an already complete script called Murder Party, convinced that had been tricked into making the picture after Balcon claimed that the studio was standing idle. With the pick of any of the actors on a Gaumont- British contract including Leslie Banks, lan Hunter and Ernest Thesiger, Powell recalled it was one of those stories, where everybody’s a character and it ends up with an Old Bailey court case with all the wrong people. ‘I was bored to death with it but I did the best I could’. The film remained unreleased while Powell worked on The Fire Raisers. ‘We went back to Night of the Party and did the days extra retakes on it which made a little more sense of it’. Missing for over years, a copy of Night of the Party was discovered at Pinewood in early 1990 deposited with the NFA, whose new print was seen for the first time at the London Film Festival.