Welcome Danger

Welcome Danger was Harold Lloyd's first talkie, and the transition was not an easy one. Well, easier compared to those of Keaton and Chaplin, but Lloyd's silent pratfalls are poorly paced for a soundie and the film is desperately overlong. This is best reserved for hardcore Lloydites--beginners are advised to check out his mid to late twenties silents before investigating his talkies, of which this is the weakest.

There are actually two different versions of this film available. Yes, Lloyd re-shot a lot of his silent footage and released it as a "talkie". But he also released the silent version to the overseas markets and to theaters not yet wired for sound. While the story remains the same, the two versions are quite different in several areas.

I recently had the privilege of seeing the silent version restored by Jere Gulden of the UCLA Film & Television archives with a new score by Robert Israel at the Motion Picture Academy.

I enjoyed it. While not as good as the classic Lloyd films like "Safety Last", "The Freshman" and my personal favorite, "The Kid Brother", it's still pretty good and I think is superior to the sound version, particularly in the use of music. Also, it seems like once Lloyd found sound, sometimes he didn't know when to shut up. There are some nice moments in the sound version, but by 1928 Lloyd really knew what he was doing with silence and I think this version is superior.

Barbara Kent provides a nice, though tiny love interest (her bio says she was only 4'11). The scene in which Lloyd, without knowing she is the girl in the picture, goes on and on how beautiful she is, is heart warming and romantic. It plays so much better in the silence. Kent was brought back for Lloyd's "Feet First".

Just a note: the great Edgar Kennedy only appears in the sound version. He replaces the desk Sargent from the silent movie.

Hopefully they will soon release both versions on one DVD, similar to what they did with the two versions of "The Big Sleep" (war and post war versions).

As you might have read here, this movie bridges silents and sound, having been shot without sound, and reshot when sound arrived -- and it appears that little of the silent material was used. There are silent-style titles between scenes, but basically we're watching an early sound film.

Sadly, like many early sound films, it's bogged down by the clumsy technology. The camera is static and actionless... in a Harold Lloyd movie! Harold has few action scenes, or even moments, for most of the film. Meanwhile, his character, speaking for the first time, turns out to be a smart-aleck, not at all like his sympathetic silent persona. Add to that the many moments when he bops somebody on the head or kicks them in the pants, which in sound comes off as painful more than comic. And the fact that he keeps casually destroying other people's property with no motivation makes him come off as, well, kind of a jerk.

Sound quality is not bad for the primitive era, but many scenes are obviously redubbed. And the dialogue! It's inane, which is bad enough. But worse, it's painfully slow, mostly overpronounced in projected, stage-actory voices. As a result, the film drags on at an adagio pace for just short of two hours. Way too long for any comedy.

And to read, again here, that it was previewed at THREE HOURS, tells me that this must have been one of the classic ill-fated Hollywood productions.

And yet... There are some real treats here. Edgar Kennedy is great as the irascible desk sergeant. He's on screen for a long time, but unbilled. Meanwhile, prominent billing goes to Charles Middleton as the weaselly John Thorne. This pleased me because four years later, Middleton and Kennedy both appeared (not together) in one of the one or two greatest comedies ever made, Duck Soup.

In Duck Soup, Kennedy has a series of great scenes -- as the lemonade salesman with Harpo, followed by Harpo, Chico, and the hat-and-leg-swapping routine. And when Freedonia goes to war, he gets to sit on Harpo in the bath.

Meanwhile, Charles Middleton, third-billed here, has merely a bit in Duck Soup, as the prosecutor at Chicolini's trial, playing straight man to Chico and Groucho. Short, but like every moment of Duck Soup, sublime.

Out of respect to the greatness of Harold Lloyd, I can't give this less than a five. But no more, either. It's for diehards & completists only. I'm one myself, but this is a long, hard slog.

Harold Lloyd's first talkie is an uneasy transitional film between the silent and the sound era. It was originally made to be a silent, and it was re-written, and much of it was re-filmed in order to make it play. What would have been best for the movie would have been to cut out the fat. It goes on for far too long, just five minutes short of two hours, which must have been Lloyd's longest film. And I've read that the original cut was nearly three hours! I love Harold more than anybody, but two hours is a little too much. I couldn't even imagine a longer version. It is a pretty good comedy, though. There are a handful of brilliant comedy bits, and Harold Lloyd, more so than either Keaton or Chaplin, was just as good in his talkies as he was in his silents. There's also a lot of brutal slapstick. That was always a part of Lloyd's work, more than Keaton's or Chaplin's, but not even the Three Stooges are this violent! Harold must brain about thirty people. It is mostly funny – I'll give him that credit – but sometimes I had to give his enemies a sympathy `OUCH!' In the film's very funny finale, Lloyd fights a gigantic black man. To knock him out once and for all, Harold shoves his hand in one of those giant conch shells and clubs the guy on the head several times in a row. OUCH! 7/10.

Don't get me wrong, I love Harold Lloyd - both his talkies and silents. However, "Welcome Danger" was a real disappointment. It was Lloyd's first talking picture, started as a silent. When he finished he realized that sound had "arrived" and reshot it as a talking picture.

The awkwardness of the picture is no worse than any other early sound film, but the big problem is Harold's persona. As usual, he is the eager beaver trying to make good, but for some reason he makes his character out to be one of the most annoying personalities in film history. He is outright mean to people who really don't deserve it.

Lloyd plays Harold Bledsoe, a college student studying botany. His father is chief of police in San Francisco. After his father dies, Harold returns home to help the force with a crime wave in Chinatown. However, he becomes fascinated with fingerprint technology and soon has the department tied in knots with all of his cataloguing and fingerprinting. Soon the police department that welcomed him so heartily would do anything to get him out of their collective hair.

It is a shame this isn't on DVD because it is not THAT bad, and it is an important milestone in cinema history since it was Lloyd's very first talking picture. "Feet First" was his second talking effort, and a much better film too. One of the real treats of this film is an unbilled appearance by Edgar Kennedy as a desk sergeant in the San Francisco police department. He spends a long time on screen for him to have no credit whatsoever, but he does a wonderful job of playing the irascible beat cop we see in his later films.