Donald Cook, Eddie Quillan, Ralph Bellamy, Hugh Marlowe, Carleton G. Young, Sydney Smith, William Gargan, Lawrence Dobkin, Howard Culver, Richard Hart, Lee Bowman, George Nader, Lee Philips, Bill Owen, Peter Lawford, and Jim Hutton...all men who have played Ellery Queen on TV and in films!* I mention this because a major failing of the Ellery Queen character is that he never had a consistent actor playing him....particularly in movies. Because of this, the series never met with the same success of ones such as Boston Blackie, Charlie Chan, the Saint or the Lone Wolf. These and many other series might have had more than one actor playing the lead, at least one or more of them had a chance to play the character in many movies and establish a consistent character. This is already a knock against "A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen" in which William Gargan played Queen.
Shortly after the story begins, there is a murder and Ellery's father, Police Inspector Queen is investigating it. Like several other films, Ellery tags along and soon finds the case interesting and then he begins investigating on his own.
Ellery is a relatively minor character in this story compared to most other B-detective films. Instead, it focuses on the many characters in the story as well as the police. This isn't a complaint...more an observation.
So is it any good? Well, in some ways, yes. The usual cliches are sometimes in the film, but mostly it's cliche-free....not the usual formula you'd expect. Additionally, William Gargan is easy to overlook. He looks much like a couple other characters in the film and he definitely underplays the role of Ellery. Again...not necessarily bad but odd. And, by the way, HOW did that bullet miss Ellery at the end of the story????
By the way, I think the most interesting thing about the movie are the uncredited actors, such as Marie Blake (Grandmama from "The Addams Family" and Jeanette MacDonald's sister), Arthur Q. Bryant (the voice and physical inspiration for Elmer Fudd) and Billy Bletcher (voiced cartoon characters, such as Pete in the Disney films).
*This list is from Wikipedia. I knew quite a few of the actors who played Ellery Queen but was surprosed that even more actors played the famed detective.
