JohnHowardReid
Associate producer: John Stone. Executive producer: Sol M. Wurtzel. Copyright 22 October 1937 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation. New York opening at the Central: 18 September 1937 (ran one week). U.S. release: 22 October 1937. 6,125 feet. 68 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A gangster's moll is murdered at the Hottentot Club. Charlie suspects foul play.NOTES: Number fifteen of the sixteen pictures made by Warner Oland in the series, and the third of five (four with Oland and one with Toler) directed by Eugene Forde.COMMENT: A lively entry with a great cast that will particularly delight Harold Huber's vast legion of fans. Harold has almost as much dialogue as Charlie himself in this one. In fact, all the players deliver solidly with the one notable exception of the player who is finally unmasked as the killer. Oddly, said player is happily convincing up to that moment but is then totally unable to strike the right murderous attitudes. Fortunately, the rest of the cast line-up more than compensates for this lapse, particularly Louise Henry (a charmingly vivacious catalyst), Joan Woodbury (who performs a torrid dance number with eye-catching dexterity), and the wonderfully perky heroine, Joan Marsh. Director Forde's staging varies from happily out-of-the-box (the cortege of welcoming police cars speeding off to the blaring strains of "Chinatown, My Chinatown"), to the reasonably stylish (Miss Woodbury versus the camera hounds) to the inconspicuously incompetent (a couple of wrong angles here and there that edit none too smoothly). As for the mystery itself, it's not only quite intriguing but fast paced and most lavishly (by "B"-picture standards) presented. Harry Jackson's lustrous photography deserves a special commendation.
bmacv
This odd little movie opens with a lofty sense of purpose, dedicating itself to `the need of arousing every man and every woman to the dangers that lie in circumstantial evidence.' What ensues resembles a `very special' episode of a sit-com.Single dad Michael O'Shea sends off for a set of Davy Crockett woodsman's tools for his son Billy Cummings (who even looks like The Beaver). Boys being boys, the kid starts busting up wood crates behind the shop of a neighborhood baker, who slaps him and confiscates the offending hatchet. Enraged, O'Shea goes off to retrieve it. In the struggle, the baker winds up on the floor, with a gash in his forehead, dead. Witnesses swear they saw O'Shea lower the fatal boom. Next thing, O'Shea's on death row.Avuncular postman Lloyd Nolan, who played no small part in all that went before, takes Cummings under his wing. With Nolan's help, and that of his friends in an athletic club, Cummings stages a charade that convinces even the governor that his dad deserves a new trial. O'Shea, meanwhile, convinced that his situation is hopeless, decides to break out of prison....It's hard to know for whom this programmer was made - the Saturday matinee peanut-gallery crowd? Despite a thick roster of B-movie stalwarts (Ray Teal, Reed Hadley, John Eldredge, John Hamilton), it's simplistic and implausible throughout. Only in its last moments does it rally, displaying any tension and visual style. One can't help wonder, with all that had just happened in Europe and the Pacific, what was the miscarriage of justice that precipitated this call to arms against circumstantial evidence?
AD
