Amantes Fugitivos

Broadway dancer Letty Morris (Madge Evans) is escaping from the advances of small time gangster Legs Caffey. She takes a bus to Hollywood, but he manages to get onboard. There is a large prison break. One of the prisoners, Paul Porter (Robert Montgomery), steals a suit and buys a bus ticket. One of the oddest and most noteable group of passengers are The Three Stooges who are playing The Three Julians in this movie.

This is a little weird. I kept wanting something intense and comparing this to The Fugitive. Instead, this is going all over the place and not that intense at all. I'm not in the right mind for this.

Chorus girl Madge Evans collects money from her associates and leaves New York for California. She hopes for a Hollywood career, but she also wants to get away from gangster Nat Pendleton. He says he'll make her a star. She won't pay the price. He gets on the bus and hounds her. She takes refuge with Robert Montgomery. He's just escaped from prison, and everyone is looking for him, especially detective C. Henry Gordon.

'Bus pictures' were a drug on the market when this came out, and you can see why; the scenes set in the bus are static, enlivened a bit by cameraman Ted Tetzlaff's sharply lit, Dutch Angle shots, alternating with foggy or snow-driven exteriors. The story is likewise raised above average by the supporting players working near but out of their usual roles. Pendleton doesn't talk out of the side of his mouth, but sounds human; Ted Healy is a friendly guy; his stooges don't interact with him at all, and look like normal show biz people discussing work. Montgomery seems bewildered and desperate. Miss Evans is still a nice girl, but wise to the ways of the world.

"Fugitive Lovers" is a very flawed film. But, it also has some very good moments. The ending and Madge Evans' acting are quite nice....and overall it's worth seeing provided you can look past a few poorly written aspects of the movie.

Letty is a chorus girl in a local play. However, the backer of this show is Legs Caffey (Nat Pendleton)...and this gangster only is paying for this show because he's infatuated with Letty. But because Letty is NOT stupid, she wants nothing to do with Caffey...she just wants to do her job. This isn't possible, however, as Caffey goes so far as having one of his goons drag her off stage in order to go to Atlantic City with him for a vacation! Not surprisingly, she soon escapes and boards a bus for Los Angeles...and Legs soon realizes what she's done and joins her...harassing her all the trip long.

In the midst of this cross country trip is a prison break and Paul Porter (Robert Montgomery) manages to make his way to the bus and ends up sitting with Letty. Eventually, they fall in love and you'll have to see the film to know what's next.

There are many problems with the story. What Legs ends up doing to help Letty simply makes no sense based on who he is supposed to be. Additionally, the notion of Letty falling for Paul so quickly is utterly ridiculous...particularly since she then is willing to risk going to prison herself in order to help him!! This makes no sense...and it's a trope used by many filmmakers....even Hitchcock TWICE (in "Young and Innocent" as well as, to a lesser extent, in "The 39 Steps"). But when you think about it...it just makes no sense. Why would a woman who just met an escaped criminal help??? Unless she's clinically insane, it just doesn't make sense.

Overall, the film is a mixed bag. The ending is great...pure and simple. So perhaps it's worth seeing just for the last 15 minutes. Otherwise, it's tough going.

By the way, there is one good reason to watch this film....Ted Healy and the Three Stooges are in it. This is because the quartet were under contract with MGM and the studio simply had no idea what to do with them. You also see them in films like "Dancing Lady"....for no particular reason. But I really like their appearance in "Fugitive Lovers" because they aren't playing it for comedy...and Moe, Curly and Larry (particularly Moe) look very normal.

When i started to watch this film it started to feel suspiciously like "It Happened One Night".The interesting thing is that this film was released just 6 weeks before "IHON.So i wonder who stole what from whom.Anyway whereas IHOO is still funny and famous this film is justly forgotten.It seems to have had the fingerprints of many writers on it,6 are credited ,but how many more actually worked on it i wonder.It starts out OK enlivened by Healy and the 3 stooges.However once they disappear and the dramatic plot takes over this film goes into freefall.It is the epitome of poor writing and plot development and to say it is unbelievable and formulaic is just to understate the case.Even Nat Pendleton with his overacting in the early part of the film was preferable to the miscast Robert Montgomery and the dreadful tear jerking 4 hankie stuff at the conclusion.My best advice is that if you are determined to watch this film then turn it off when Healy and the Stooges leave.Then you will feel that you have seen a reasonable film.

I watched this film merely because of the opportunity to see the Three Stooges in one of their early features. I was surprised (pleasantly) by their appearance, as they actually played real characters, pretty much, and not outrageous clowns. And although their former honcho Ted Healy is in the film, they don't really interact with him. But the true surprise was how wonderfully entertaining and brilliantly shot the whole thing is. Richard Boleslawsky and Ted Tatzleff, the cinematographer, created a visual sense to this film unmatched by anything I remember seeing from the period. And the pacing, both in cutting and in dialog, manages to be rapid-fire and eloquent at the same time. So much has been made about the development of deep-focus photography in the years following this film, it's often forgotten that short focus can be fabulous to look at as well. Inside the bus that provides much of the setting for this film, there is always a sense of constant life going on in the background even though the foreground faces are the only things in sharp focus. I loved the look of this movie. Faces are given immense importance, even when the character who owns the face is not so important to the plot. And even the minor characters have minutely detailed physical, facial, and emotional detail of expression, bringing each of them to vivid life, often in a few seconds or less. Technically, I think this movie represents an amazing accomplishment. The plot and the performances are neither unfamiliar nor astonishing, but the execution in virtually every department is smashing. I wish I'd known about this little gem years ago.