Not so much a picturisation of Ellery Queen's 1934 The Chinese Orange Mystery, this flick is a take on Paramount's 1933 Alice in Wonderland, with Miss Henry snugly and smugly repeating her part as the innocent abroad, while Eddie Quillan makes impotent if cheeky woo as the bungling knight. Alas, although the knight's role is little more than a cameo in Alice, the writers here have mercilessly expanded the part, even though it meant treading on the lines of more capable players like break-your-heart Rita La Roy (a most engaging and super-attractively regal young duchess) and Kay Hughes' pleasing Cheshire Cat who, as we might expect, disappears from the action, alas, for long spells. We are left too often with Wade Boteler's far too bellicose Mad Hatter, and are also forced to suffer far too much tiresome comic relief from Tweedledum's Franklin Pangborn, although admittedly William Newell's occasional input as Tweedledee is just about right.<br /><br />Worse still, Ralph Staub (who squeezed maybe a dozen feature assignments in between his excruciating "Screen Snapshots" series) has handled TMM in a mercilessly heavy-handed and thoroughly routine style that totally smothers every latent spark of wit in a screenplay that was none too promising to begin with.<br /><br />Miserable production values don't help either. Even the sound recording was way below par in the DVD I viewed recently. It was so muffled, I missed half the dialogue. But after all, maybe that was an asset!