Le club des casse-cou

This is one of the most energetic of the non-Hoppy entries in Boyd's film resume. Here he's Skipper Clark, the nominal head of a group of Hollywood stunt men called, what else, THE LUCKY DEVILS... a bunch of hard drinking, womanizing guys who are full of superstitions. The #1 rule is a married guy can't be a stunt man, which is proven by the death of one of the newly married guys. Enter a beautiful-yet- despondent Dorothy Wilson, easily the best performer in the movie, who threatens the Devil's dynamic. I don't want to give away the plot, but the real interest is the behind the scenes look at early sound movie making. There's several extensive scenes (including a great opener) involving stunt work... many outdoors (along with some obvious rear projection stuff). Lots of talk about safety but you won't see anyone practicing it. Bruce Cabot's seen here as a stunt man, but it he's wallpaper, seemingly saving his voice for his part in then-in-production KING KONG... Creighton (Lon Jr.) Chaney looks 20 years younger than he would just 8 years later in THE WOLF MAN. Enjoy it and add up the felonies Boyd commits in the last 5 minutes of the movie...

... before he left modern dress roles forever and became Hopalong Cassidy for the long term.

The film starts with an extremely violent bank robbing scene. Men armed with automatic weapons storm the bank from the doors and the glass ceiling in broad daylight. Anybody, customer or employee, who even looks the wrong way gets filled full of lead. An operator trying to reach the police is punched in the face and is thrown down the stairs. Then the police arrive and a director yells "CUT". You've been watching stuntmen do their stuff including the telephone operator! Have I got your attention?

The rest of the film is about Hollywood stuntmen and the fact that they are "lucky devils" to be alive at the end of each work day. There was no Osha or workman's comp, or class action lawsuits in 1932. You die in a stunt, too bad for you. But while you are alive the pay is good, and the more dangerous the stunt the better the pay.

So obviously some superstitions grow up around such men who are always in danger. If a bottle breaks, then some stuntman is going to "get it". And by "It" I don't mean an Academy award. And there is the slogan of the business that "A good stuntman makes a bad husband and a good husband makes a bad stuntman". And if a good husband becomes a bad enough stuntman that he dies on the job, the wife is left broke. So Boyd's character is never going to get the marriage bug. But then he meets her - a starving unemployed girl he saves from suicide, and his motto goes down the tubes. How will this work out? Watch and find out.

This is not your typical precode. There is no extra or premarital sex going on. The things in this film that the code would stomp out in 1934 is all of the violence and dangerous stunts and probably even the suicide attempt by the jobless desperate starving girl. And then there is a police chase scene in which the police are outsmarted. That would be gone during the production code era too.

Things to look out for? For one, note that the script writer is a woman, sitting right next to the director on the set, editing on the fly. Ask Frances Marion how that career worked out for women after about 1935 when the suits began to realize they had made it through the talkies and the worst of the depression and could jettison women in important jobs behind the camera. Also, look out for a very young Lon Chaney Jr. among the stuntmen almost a decade before he becomes The Wolfman.

Highly recommended.

Lucky Devils (1933)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Last month I watched a short called Thrills for Spills, which focused on stunt players in movies and this film here features one intense stunt, which was featured in that short. This RKO film, based on stories by two real-life stuntmen, stars William Boyd as the leader of a group of stuntmen who always tells his men not to fall in love because this will get them killed in their stunts because their minds will be on their wife and not the job. Boys eventually falls for a woman (Dorothy Wilson) who never makes it in Hollywood and his love for her costs a stunt to go horribly wrong. Soon Boyd is without a job and when his wife needs $100 to get into a hospital he must try one of the most dangerous stunts out there for the money. This film is pretty silly but it moves incredibly well in its short 64-minute running time. Boyd is very energetic in his role and the supporting cast is just as impressive. Bruce Cabot and Lon Chaney, Jr. (still using his real name Creighton) plays two of the stuntmen and it's always nice seeing them in these types of roles. Roscoe Ates, the stutterer in Freaks, has a role here as well, which requires him to be humiliated throughout. The stunt scenes are all very well done and it's nice seeing a movie taking a look at these men who never get enough credit.

Movie stuntmen are a tight group. They are skirt-chasers, but marriage is the death of their work. Wives would never let their men be stuntmen and a wedding tends to wreck their daredevil ways. Skipper Clark (William Boyd) and Bob Hughes (William Gargan) grab Fran Whitley (Dorothy Wilson) before she jumps off the balcony to her death. She falls for Skipper and they get married.

This is a pre-Code drama. The story is fine although I'm not really sold on the premise. At least, stunt people are not this way today A love triangle would be a more compelling story. The most compelling parts of this movie are the stunts. They are quite exciting and are great examples of early stunt work. Maybe one can fast forward to those sections.

The first five minutes of this film will quickly convince you that this is definitely a "Pre-Code" movie--a film so named because it was made just before the Hays Production Code was fully enforced--putting a stop to excessive violence, sexuality and "adult themes". Just a year later, a film as amazingly violent as this one never would have been allowed. That's because this portion of the movie features a bank robbery scene that is at least as violent as the ones in BONNIE AND CLYDE--which was made over three decades later. Blood is flying, customers are being splattered and hundreds of bullets fly. This is not the only extremely violent moment in the film, as later you see a man fall into a burning building and it's very shocking indeed.

The film is not really about bank robberies, though, but is about the rough and dangerous world of the movie stuntman. In the 1920s, some Hollywood producers were pretty cavalier about risking the lives of their stunt men, though how unnecessarily lives are tossed away in this film seems silly--but also very entertaining.

The main character in this film is William Boyd (later known as "Hopalong Cassidy") and once he marries, his new bride is convinced he'll be killed. Judging by the movie so far, this isn't surprising! I could tell you more about the plot but don't want to ruin it. The film is very exciting to watch and the violence is shocking but also intriguing because it was so extreme. A good film but certainly not an intellectual or deep film.

PS--Look carefully at the beginning and you'll see a White guy in black face--something that's shocking when seen today.