Captain Applejack

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.

Rich, old guy ambrose is used to his routine. During a terrble storm, madame valeska asks for refuge from the weather, and from a dangerous spy who is chasing after her. But when ambrose goes to call the po-po, he falls under valeska's spell, and decides not to call the coppers. Even when more interlopers show up! Clairvoyants and general riff raff suddenly appear, but they are really there to look for hidden treasure. They all seem to come and go, without being questioned. Will ambrose put a stop to these burglars? A sixty three minute shortie from associated artists. Directed by hobart henley. Story by walter hackett. This has the feel that it started as a play.....the sound quality is pretty bad, and the fact that there is a storm raging in the background for most of the film doesn't help. It's all just okay. A bit tedious. It was probably more interesting back in the day, but it's pretty dated at this point.

THE STORY & GENRE -- Aristocratic home holds secret pirate's treasure which brings forth crooks. Not genre.

THE VERDICT -- Brisk and zany comedy, grade bumped up a notch for love of the ward (Mary Brian). Also some pre-code naughtiness. 6.5.

FREE ONLINE -- Yes, foreign websites from a TCM broadcast, 63 minutes.

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).

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?