A vos ordres madame

Adapted from a Robert Louis Stevenson story called "The Suicide Club", this is a rapid-fire brain teaser with plenty of terrific acting and witty dialogue, Robert Montgomery is wonderful in the lead, and Frank Morgan matched him parry for thrust. Reginald Owen (later Scrooge) is marvellous whenever he appears. I enjoyed it immensely.

This is an intriguing version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Suicide Club", with ever-urbane aristocrat being recruited by an apparent group of boring rich people, willing to kill themselves for sport ! All is not as it seems and after Montgomery encounters mysterious Russell, the stage is set for a surprising revelation and an exciting climax.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY and ROSALIND RUSSELL head the cast of this comedy/mystery based on "The Suicide Club" by Robert Louis Stevenson. After an intriguing start, it gets lost in a strand of threads that are never unraveled with any finesse. The result is a less than satisfying mystery but told in an entertaining manner.

Victoria London is the setting for the story which, like most Stevenson tales, wanders into the dark side with some proper mood and atmosphere. Frank Morgan is his usual blustery self (what a great Dr. Watson he would have made if Nigel Bruce weren't around), but his mannerisms are played for less comic effect than usual.

The plot unwinds in a snappy one hour and fifteen minutes of running time but explanations are skimpy and you have to be paying close attention to catch certain facts. As the President of the Suicide Club, REGINALD OWEN is burdened by some obvious make-up alterations but does a competent enough job in his unusual role.

Passes the time and is worth a watch as a programmer of mildly entertaining interest. Louis Hayward is impressive in a brief and rather thankless role.

Prince Florizel of Bohemia -- where have I heard that before? In one of Shakespeare's final plays, 'The Winter's Tale.' There, the young prince falls in love with a beautiful shepherdess, Perdita, who is actually a princess. She doesn't know that, of course (it's a version of the Cinderella story). Roz Russell is also incognito in the film, but she knows who she is. So 'Winter's Tale' gives MGM the idea for filling out the Stevenson story by giving a role to Russell. The film also has traces of Henry IV, where the king admonishes his son, and where, at the end, the son must fight for his kingdom, as Prince Hal does against Hotspur at the Battle of Shrewsbury. There's also a trace of 'As You Like It,' a play in which a disguised woman administers a love-test to the man in whom she is already interested. I do not believe that the Shakesperean elements of this film have been noticed. I'll have to reread the Stevenson "Suicide Club' stories, which I do not have at hand, to see how much of the Shakespearean context is there. It's a strange and sometimes compelling film, beginning with a musical comedy format, where we expect to see Nelson and Jeanette any moment, and then moving into a fogbound London mystery. Montgomery is very convincing as an absolutely fearless prince and Russell is lovely as the mystery woman assigned to kill the prince. This one is worth watching. I just read the Stevenson story. Prince Florizel is of Bohemia (a la 'Winter's Tale'), but there is no woman in the story, only the mention of a failed love affair at the outset that motivates the young man who introduces the two Bohemians to the Club. So Roz's role as the disguised princess is an addition to the story -- and a good one at that!

At first sight this MGM oddity looks like a typical over-the-top 30s effort, but I found it growing on me (despite the ever-increasing number of loose ends - why? what? how?). If you can accept Montgomery and Russell as 18th century foreign Royals who blend perfectly in a Britain even more nutty than it's usually depicted, then this is quite an enjoyable and unusually imaginative slice of early Hollywood.