Don Chicago

Essential viewing for connoisseurs of the absolutely awful is this engaging but spectacularly unfunny gangster spoof that has lain in deserved obscurity for 75 years until this afternoon's resurrection on Talking Pictures.

Back in the thirties Finlay Currie was playing fast-talking Americans in British films while in Hitchcock's 'The 39 Steps' Wylie Watson was treading the boards as Mr. Memory. Ten years later Currie was still playing yanks while Watson was still in league with crooks, this time presiding over a seance (one of many sequences better photographed than it deserves by veteran cameraman Gerald Gibbs).

It treats us to numerous surreal touches (such as 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray in blackface with his twirly moustache in white) and potentially funny breaches of the third wall while offering plenty of leeway to a game cast - including Charles Farrell in multiple cameo roles that anticipates Michael Ripper's ever-present 'Common Man' in 'What a Crazy World!' - but without any redeeming pace or grace. The title role not surprisingly proved Canadian comedian Jackie Hunter's last starring vehicle for the cinema. (But if the film version is anything to go by, C.E.Bechhofer-Roberts' original 1944 novel might be worth a look.)

Whenever Eddie Gray comes on screen it lights up.He was an extremely funny comedian.To me his juggling act is the highlight of the film.We are lucky to have this record of his act.Otherwise the film ,and in particular,the lead are quite forgettable.

Despite it having all the subtlety and coherence of a Frank Randle vehicle, I found this great fun throughout. Obscure Canadian comedian Jackie Hunter has his only lead as the Chicago gangster exiled to England, a land he is only familiar with through Robin Hood movies. His performance is certainly not lacking in gusto, even though finally unmemorable. A rare chance too to see legendary music hall comedian 'Monsewer' Eddie Gray, albeit in little more than an extension of his stage act. Best of all is veteran character actor Amy Veness, usually seen as reserved middle-class English ladies, here enjoying herself as the wonderfully named Bowie Knife Bella, an American gangster. It moves at breakneck pace and, as Dick Emery might have said, it is awful but I liked it.