Captain Applejack

I'm watching this antique Old Dark House mystery on TCM right now and it quickly became evident to me that the film, its first silent incarnation ("Strangers In The Night") or the play it was adapted from were the first kernel of inspiration for Belgian comic book artist Hergé (Georges Rémi)'s "Secret of the Unicorn" and its sequel "The Treasure of Rackham the Red" (1943-1944). More proof that a large part of the inspiration for Hergé's melodramatic adventures were from sometimes second-rate Hollywood movies and plots that were very creaky to begin with. What he did with them of course was sheer genius and entirely original. But the basic idea was this: An ordinary man discovers that he is the descendant and inheritor of a famous pirate's treasure hidden somewhere in an old house. In the process, he has flashbacks of being the pirate himself, which is just what happens to Captain Haddock in those comic books.

Of course, not all of Hergé's inspirations were "second-rate". One might also reflect on the similarity of the ending of Sacha Guitry's "Les Perles de la Couronne" (The Pearls of the Crown, 1936, finally available on DVD in the US) and the ending of Hergé's "L'Oreille cassée" (The Broken Ear, published as a serial starting in 1935 and ending in 1937).

It's the House of Applejohn on the storm-battered English coast. Ambrose is the last of the Applejohns and intends to sell the house that has been in the family for a hundred years. His ward Poppy Faire has an unrequited crush on him. Aunt Agatha is beside herself over the sale. Madame Anna Valeska comes out of a stormy night seeking shelter from the murderous Ivan Borolsky. Psychic Horace Pengard and Kate Pengard show up secretly looking for something inside the house.

It is a pre-Code American comedy. With the constant storm noises, this is set up for a spooky horror thriller. Instead, everybody is doing crazy accents and there are sexual shenanigans. It turns into a Scooby-Doo treasure hunt and then a pirate movie. This loses me during the unnecessary pirate section. The stormy night does feel like a play. I can see this being funnier even when they start doing the chasing around.

This film, I suppose, is a comedy. Because of that, the cast was apparently informed to really overdo it--with some of the broadest acting I have ever seen. It was originally a stage production and in this case, it looks like they must have filmed it as it was done on stage--loud and over-emoted. CAPTAIN APPLEJACK begins with Ambrose home on a stormy night in his mansion. He is dying for some adventure in his life, and almost immediately it begins! People start coming in and out of his house at an alarming rate and he is deeply involved in all sorts of silly intrigue. It's like your typical "old dark house" film so common in this era but on steroids--with everything coming rapidly and with no letup.

The first thing I noticed is how much Kay Strozzi sucked in this film! This probably sounds very harsh, but when this actress came storming into the home of Ambrose Applejohn, I was just bowled over by how terrible her accents were. She didn't know if she was supposed to be French, Russian or just an idiot. Kids in high school productions usually have better accents than hers! And, to top it off, within the first ten minutes of the film, three different women fainted--talk about a load of malarkey! These factors combined with the style of the production (with people walking on and off camera much like they'd do it in a play) made me realize early on that I was in for a very long ride, indeed.

After several actors came in and out of the set, in came "Ivan" (Arthur Edmund Carewe) to prove that Strozzi was not the only actor who could produce a crappy and unconvincing Russian accent! I think, honestly, that any of the Ritz Brothers could have done this job better. He was lousy, but fortunately he didn't stick around for long. As for leading man John Halliday, he also overdid it quite a bit. In 1931, perhaps people thought this was all a funny farce. Today, it mostly just seemed tedious.

I cannot recommend this film to anyone--even people who like bad films, as this one wasn't bad enough to be funny--it was just plain bad. There is nothing really positive I can say about the movie other than it was blessedly short!

By the way, at about 32 minutes into the film, note the breast grabbing scene--something you might just see in a Pre-Code film but you'd never have seen once this Production Code was strengthened and adopted in 1934. Quite a shocker, eh?

"Captain Applejack" (1931) with John Halliday, Mary Brian, Louise Closser Hale, Kay Strozzi, Alec B. Francis, Claud Allister, Julia Swayne Gordon, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Otto Hoffman, and William B. Davidson is the perfect example of how tastes change over a one hundred year period. This began as a play in 1921 which ran again in Chicago in 1923, the same year it was turned into a silent film called "Strangers of the Night" (Otto Hoffman played the same character he played later in the '31 version); then this film was made. By 1931 the story was already very much old hat. This film was directed by Hobart Henley, and the sound effects of wind and rain are ceaseless and by the end annoying and very fake. The film is a mystery/crime/comedy/Old Dark House drama. How do you combine all of these? 1920's stage could easily do this, and it was very popular. With films like "Frankenstein", "Dracula", "The Old Dark House", etc., etc., etc., the genre developed well over-and-above what "Captain Applejack" seemed to be. It is loads of fun in its own way, but only to a crowd that enjoys what was being done in 1931 and before in theater transferred to the movies. To a modern crowd this film will be laughable! It's supposed to be in some respects: it's made to be smiled at the whole way through. The audience is supposed to smile WITH it. But this will be now laughed AT.

Halliday, playing Ambrose Applejohn, is bored with all, and so has put up his old family mansion for sale. Seems that several are aware that somewhere in the old place a vast treasure is hidden that was put there centuries before by an earlier ancestor pirate called Captain Applejack. These several come in all shapes, sizes, sexes, and job descriptions, from Russian something-like-a-countess to a cop. Strozzi's accent, by the way, is over-the-top just-plain-awful!! Not that her acting is any better. The former Broadway actress (1912-1936) only made one other film. She had been in a play in 1929 with Halliday, so their combo may have been because of the acquaintance.

This is pure camp which I had seen once before years ago in an inferior print. The one I watched last night was the Warner Archive Collection release, and its sound is very, very antiquated and now truly scratchy and bad. It's a Vitaphone sound release, and almost sounds as though it's still sound-on-disc! Discs worn out!

If you watch this as if it were a play being shown in a theater in 1929/30 you'll enjoy it a lot and for what it is. If you watch it from the viewpoint of a filmic endeavor of 2021 you'll turn it off within five minutes. I've now seen it twice all the way through. It was fun. But this kind of fun only needs to be experienced once or twice before it wears itself thin to the falling-through point. When you fall through you could hurt yourself, but only pride-wise...

There was in the 1920s on stage and the 1930s in the movies a genre of 'Old Dark House' shows, so-called for the J.B. Priestley novel of the same name. Priestley's novel was eventually made into a wonderful movie by James Whale with some great stars playing people with ordinary problems who are forced to take shelter from the storm in an ancient house inhabited by lunatics.

But what, this movie asks, do you do if you live in an ancient house, you are bored out of your mind and a horde of lunatics descends on you during a storm? Well, you have this movie, which is quite all right, although not a patch on Whale's movie, being hampered a bit by competent but not great actors, stagy direction and a plot which distracts you from the potentially interesting performances. Definitely worth a look, but you won't be coming back for a second show.