Strange Case of Hennessy, The (1933)
** (out of 4)
This spoof has pretty much been forgotten to time but it's actually not too bad as long as you don't take it too serious or expect very much from it. A rich man goes missing and his family believes he's been murdered and luckily for them Detective Silo Dance (Cliff Edwards) shows up to solve the case. This film was released on the 3-disc set "Sherlock Holmes: The Archive Collection Vol. 1", which is rather funny since the short itself is a spoof of Philo Vance and not Holmes. With that said, this is a mildly interesting film that runs just over 15-minutes and for the most part it should keep people entertained. I thought Edwards was the main reason to check this out because he gives one of the strangest, most surreal and over-the-top performances I've ever seen. I wouldn't say it was a good performance but it's just so cuckoo that you can't help but be pulled in by it and it does keep you entertained and the movie flowing at a good pace. The film unfortunately has that very annoying gimmick where the characters talk in a rhymed speech. In other words, there are several sequences where the characters pretty much "sing" their dialogue and this here is something that was apparently popular for about five-minutes back in the 30s but thankfully those fine folks from back then grew tired of it and it didn't stick around too long.
