Flirting with Danger

A trio of girl-chasing explosives experts are sent to San Rico, where they get up to their necks in trouble with their employers, the police and the local women. An extremely modest - and largely plot-free - comedy from Poverty Row studio Monogram which is notable today only for a rare screen appearance from William Cagney, the younger brother of tough-guy actor, Jimmy. It's a weird experience watching Cagney Jr: he's taller and slimmer than his brother, but they are almost identical otherwise, particularly when William grins. He isn't given much to do, though, which suggests he was probably nothing more than a piece of novelty casting, and most of the heavy lifting is left to the ever-dependable Robert Armstrong and screen funny guy Edgar 'slow burn' Kennedy. The laughs are pretty thin, but the three of them at least generate some degree of on-screen camaraderie even though they spend most of their time double-crossing one another.

Robert Armstrong, Edgar Kennedy, and William Cagney are powder mixers. They invent and put together explosives for a company which has just opened a plant in a Latin American company. They are sent down to the new plant, where they play gags on each other, and try to make time with various women, and get into scrapes.

It's a lighthearted trio comedy, a lot like the ones that Warner Brothers made with Jimmy Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh, but definitely low rent, and without the easy camaraderie of the higher-priced assortment that Warners would put together. Armstrong plays his mug character, talking out of the side of his mouth. Cagney is the youngster of the three, and it's up to him to be in love with Marion Burns, the company's secretary who's sent down to the new plant to be liaison with the main office. Kennedy, unsurprisingly, is the surest farceur of the three, even though he doesn't get to do his signature slow burn. Other recognizable names are Wilhelm von Brincken and Gino Corrado.

The copy I looked at had a soundtrack so filled with hisses that it was occasionally difficult to tell what was being said.

"Flirting With Danger" is a very strange old film. It stars Robert Armstrong (of "King Kong" fame), William Cagney* (Jimmy's brother) and Edgar Kennedy as three guys who love working with explosives and chasing women. Of the three, Kennedy seems obsessed with explosives and fireworks and nearly blows himself up several times during the course of the movies. He's also the least interested in women. This makes for a very odd film--one with a lot of comedy, a bit of romance and a lot of bizarreness! Overall, it's a highly uneven and strange film. And, oddly, there really isn't much in the way of plot. However, it is enjoyable--even with all of its many deficiencies as well as the inclusion of an annoying stuttering character (uggh!).

While William made a few films, he never caught on as an actor. Later, he became his brother's agent and produced quite a few of his films.