Lost in Limehouse

'Lost in Limehouse or Lady Esmeralda's Predictament' is one of the funniest shorts I have ever seen. It not only is a magnificent parody of Sherlock Holmes but also wonderfully spoofs the British upper class, stage and silent film melodramas, and tales featuring evil Chinese with tong wars and hatchet men. Lady Esmeralda, the daughter of the Duke of Dunkwell, is being held captive by the cad Sir Marmaduke Rakes in a Chinese den of inequity in Limehouse. But never fear, the humble Harold Heartright, Sheerluck Jones and Hotson will save her. Clearly Sheerluck has amazing deductive skills. With great solemnity he relates to Hotson a recent case where "It was then I realized my dear Hotson that the victim was dead." "How did you deduce that?" "His head was missing." The visual and verbal gags abound. The actors did a wonderful job and clearly enjoyed all the wackiness. It was a bit odd seeing the popular silent actress Laura LaPlante (The Cat and the Canary and A Church Mouse being two of her better known movies) in such a short. This is the only British short I have ever seen and it makes me want to see more. It was great.

This evening, I watched several Masquers Club shorts and I must say that they are enjoyable...in VERY small doses. This is because the acting is deliberately bad and way over the top...so much so that the idea wears thin and should have been confined to one, or perhaps two, shorts.

The story is a spoof where the daughter of a rich British family is taken prisoner by a Snidely Whiplash-like villain. He tries to force her to marry him...but she is in love with another man. And, this lover sets out to find and rescue the damsel...with the help of a Sherlock Holmes-like detective.

While the basic story isn't bad, as the film progresses it becomes more and more tedious...especially when the good guys pose as Chinese tong members!! It's really pretty awful by the end...which is why I score this one a 4, though it did start off well.

Lost in Limehouse (1933)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

This two-reel short probably isn't going to be known by many but it's yet another spoof of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson who were clearly very popular long before Basil Rathbone came along. In the film, the daughter of a rich family is kidnapped by an evil Chinese gangster so Sheerluck Jones and Dr. Hotson are called in to track her down. That's pretty much all there is to the story but they could have had Shakespeare do a re-write and it's doubtful too much would have been accomplished. This is a pretty bland and boring film from start to finish and sadly there's not too much talent involved to make any of the humor work. The majority of the humor comes from sending up various serials including FuManchu as the Chinese man is clearly modeled after him. Much of the humor has him doing silly laughs or going over-the-top when it comes time to kill the girl he's holding captive. We get long scenes full of dialogue yet it pretty much goes into one ear and out the other as none of it really caught my attention and I couldn't repeat a single line of it to you. Another problem is that it appears most of the actors were either not in on the joke or perhaps they too realized the story wasn't that good and they simply didn't try. Olaf Hytten plays Sheerluck without much luck in finding a performance. Many of the supporting players are all over the map so the lack of direction is also quite apparent.

Although this short film appears British, it was actually produced in America in 1933. It is a parody of both the Sherlock Holmes and Fu Manchu characters. The title character is called Sheerluck Jones and it also utilizes the standard villain with a big mustache with a cackling laugh that is fond of spinning the ends of his mustache in his hand.

Intermixed with the blatant racist formula, much of the action reminds the viewer of the Three Stooges of Moe, Larry and Curly. Since the distinctive slapstick antics of the original stooges were developed in the 1920's, it is very possible that they were an inspiration for this movie. There is also a mass fight in an opium den that would do justice to the saloon fights that were so common in later American westerns.

With over the top acting, strongly presented dialog and some physical expressions right out of the silent movies, this movie demonstrates a great deal of how movie comedy is being developed in the early years of the talkies.

Though not as madcap and anarchic as the Mark Sandrich-directed Masquers short (Thru Thin and Thicket) I saw at the same Cinesation, this is a pretty good sendup of Victorian melodramas, an easy target (and an easy one to make unfunny). Sheerluck Jones and Hotson are among the characters who try to rescue a young woman from the clutches of a villain who has hidden her in Limehouse (that is, Chinatown). Interestingly, it anticipates one of Bob and Ray's running gags, characters introducing themselves the way a narrator would (ie, "I am young Robert Smythe, the Village Blacksmith secretly in love with Miss Esmerelda").