No Interest
Rex Lease needs a wife. If he's married by midnight, his wife collects $800,000. Fortunately, he's supposed to marry Vera Reynolds, but for some reason, can't. So he pretends to be married to Nita Martan, who's Sam Hardy's secretary and cop Paul Hurst's girl friend, and they all wind up by coincidence in an Old Dark House, along with a mountain lion, from which the ladies occasionally disappear.
It's supposed to be a comedy-thriller, and given director Frank Strayer, and Miss Reynolds' silent career, you'd think they would have something, but the mediocre script by Scott Darling, the slow pacing by actors in dialogue and a farcical door-slamming sequence convince me that it's still early days for sound pictures. Where the silent personnel would be comfortable miming things at a leisurely pace and undercranking hard, to make the actions dance, now they're slowing down the actions to give the audience a chance to laugh... and there isn't much to laugh at.
It's a pity, because Strayer, at least, would figure it out and wind up directing the Blondie series at Columbia for some high-speed slapstick humor. Here, though, it's pretty much a misfire.
It's supposed to be a comedy-thriller, and given director Frank Strayer, and Miss Reynolds' silent career, you'd think they would have something, but the mediocre script by Scott Darling, the slow pacing by actors in dialogue and a farcical door-slamming sequence convince me that it's still early days for sound pictures. Where the silent personnel would be comfortable miming things at a leisurely pace and undercranking hard, to make the actions dance, now they're slowing down the actions to give the audience a chance to laugh... and there isn't much to laugh at.
It's a pity, because Strayer, at least, would figure it out and wind up directing the Blondie series at Columbia for some high-speed slapstick humor. Here, though, it's pretty much a misfire.
- boblipton
- Dec 13, 2017