[6] Cary Grant made his big-screen debut as a singing javelin thrower in this romantic comedy about adulterous lovers (Thelma Todd and Roland Young) who go to great lengths to hide their secret affair from the woman’s husband (Grant). The cover-up involves hiring a woman (Lili Damita) to play the other man’s wife and all of the characters taking a trip to Venice together. This Is …
[5] Groucho Marx plays the dean of a university in desperate need of a football win. His son (Zeppo) convinces him to recruit two football players at a local bar, but of course, Groucho recruits the wrong people (Chico and Harpo). When the rival university hires the real football players, Groucho responds by sending his new recruits to kidnap theirs, and everything ends in a …
[6] Joan Blondell (The Public Enemy, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) stars as a bored nurse who gets recruited by a police detective to infiltrate a rich family’s mansion and help him solve a suicide case that looks suspiciously like murder. Blondell is bubbly and irreverent in the role, screaming when director Lloyd Bacon (Marked Woman, 42nd Street) brings out the expressionistic long shadows and then …
[2] This laughably bad melodrama is based on a Eugene O’Neill stage play about a woman who cheats on her mentally ill husband in order to have a kid who won’t end up in the looney bin. Clark Gable and Norma Shearer give insanely over-the-top theatrical performances. I was reminded of Jon Lovitz’s ‘Actor’ skit on Saturday Night Live. The movie is also littered with …
[7] Charles Laughton plays H.G. Wells’ mad scientist in the first film version of The Island of Dr Moreau. It’s a reasonably faithful adaptation until the halfway point, where it gets as loose as the Demi Moore version of The Scarlet Letter. Wells’ provocative suggestions about man’s animal nature remain largely submerged in the movie’s Saturday matinee atmosphere. Leading man Richard Arlen (so striking in …
[6] When a madman kidnaps the inventor of a lethal ray gun, it’s up to a powerful hypnotist named Chandu to stop the fiend from unleashing the death ray on the world. This is Bela Lugosi in his prime. His performance as the madman Roxan is definitely the best part of this old, Saturday matinee movie. I did not care at all, however, for Edmund …
[5] Jean Harlow plays such a nasty little character in Red-Headed Woman, sleeping her way to the top of the workforce while ending marriages left and right. She’s so cold and calculating, I almost wish the movie would have been like most others of its kind and punished the slut for her wicked ways. But this time, the slut gets away with it all. I …
[6] Paul Muni plays a thinly-veiled version of Al Capone in Howard Hawks’ Scarface, a grim, violent gangster flick that was pretty controversial for its time. The lack of bloodshed keeps it tame by today’s standards, but myriad onscreen deaths and an immoral leading character delayed the release of Scarface until two years after it was filmed. Muni is reliably good (he’s an Oscar-winner for …
[6] Call me a sucker for an Olympic swimmer in a loincloth, but I enjoy Johnny Weissmuller’s maiden swing through the jungle. This first feature in the long running matinee series is the one where Tarzan meets Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan), whose on expedition with her father to find a fabled elephant graveyard. He kidnaps her, but then she saves him from her angry father, he …
[8] A man is wrongly convicted and sentenced to a brutal chain gang in this gripping tragedy from Mervyn LeRoy (The Wizard of Oz). Paul Muni (Scarface, Life of Emile Zola) stars as the innocent prisoner who succeeds in a daring escape and becomes a well-respected member of society before the law catches up with him. State extradition laws offer him some sanctuary, but Muni …
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