Category: 1936
-
Dancing Pirate has multiple awkward points: the omnipresent brownface, the astounding action conclusion (not astounding in a good way), or just the charmless lead performances. The film tells the tale of Bostonian Charles Collins, who—on his way to visit a relation—gets kidnapped and taken aboard a pirate ship. Hence the title. Collins is a superb…
-
Second-billed Myrna Loy shows up in The Great Ziegfeld at around the two-hour mark. The film runs three hours. The about a half-hour of it is musical numbers; they’re presumably recreations of the actual Ziegfeld stage productions, but even without having read the Wikipedia article first, it’s obvious Ziegfeld’s a glorifying tribute. Loy’s most significant…
-
The Princess Comes Across is an uneven mix of comedy and mystery. Too much mystery, too little comedy, noticeable lack of romance. The romance is an awkward afterthought in Walter DeLeon, Francis Martin, Don Hartman, and Frank Butler’s script (four screenwriters is probably too much even in 1936; definitely for this kind of picture), which…
-
Tell Your Children, or Reefer Madness, is sort of mundanely bad. Sure, Carl Pierson’s editing somehow pads shots to make the sixty-six minute movie drag even more than it does because of the terrible script and bad acting, but the script is just dumb and bad. There’s nothing exciting about it, other than to see…
-
Wholly terrible serial about infinitely stupid master detective Jack Mulhall, whose only idea is ever to go start a fight at the sailor bar/gang headquarters. Sometimes involving being in makeup, though not particularly good makeup. Serial is never amazing, there are rarely exploits; unfortunately there’s a lot of clutching hand shots throughout, menacing unknowing victims…
-
I was expecting Clutching Hand to have a bad ending. It was inevitable. But I didn’t expect them to entirely ignore one of the major plot threads. If Clutching Hand has two plot threads, which it spends fourteen chapters suggesting are intricately connecting, The Lone Hand entirely ignores one of them. It’s astounding. Especially since…
-
I was expecting Clutching Hand to have a bad ending. It was inevitable. But I didn’t expect them to entirely ignore one of the major plot threads. If Clutching Hand has two plot threads, which it spends fourteen chapters suggesting are intricately connecting, The Lone Hand entirely ignores one of them. It’s astounding. Especially since…
-
The Silent Spectre surprised me. I didn’t think Clutching Hand would be able to surprise me after they did the boat stuff–and there’s a lot more ship-based fisticuffs this chapter–but then it goes ahead and surprises me the very next chapter. I had no idea lead Jack Mulhall could be so exceptionally bad. He’s had…
-
I stand corrected. Clutching Hand does do something with the ship. There’s a large scale fist fight between Jack Mulhall, Rex Lease, and their pals and the mutinying crew of the ship. It’s not good–though there are some decent stunts–but it’s there. I was wrong. I was right, however, about the resolution to Robert Walker’s…
-
Not only is twelfth time the charm for Clutching Hand as far as chapter title matching content–there is a real Hidden Danger–this chapter also has master detective, constant cosplayer, and general goof lead Jack Mulhall actually solve a crime. And the solution is really, really clever. The reveal sequence isn’t particularly great–it’s not like director…
-
Not only is twelfth time the charm for Clutching Hand as far as chapter title matching content–there is a real Hidden Danger–this chapter also has master detective, constant cosplayer, and general goof lead Jack Mulhall actually solve a crime. And the solution is really, really clever. The reveal sequence isn’t particularly great–it’s not like director…
-
The Ship of Peril features the single most surprising thing about The Amazing Exploits of the Clutching Hand so far. They actually shoot some of the chapter on a ship. Not all of it–like when the rough and tumble crew are below deck, it’s obviously not a ship, but there are at least a half…
-
While he’s lost his advantage (apparently) by the cliffhanger, master detective and frequent dimwit Jack Mulhall bumbles his way into a win in A Desperate Chance. Because he’s got her house bugged (with a camera, natch), he’s able to see Mae Busch get conned and go to… rescue her? Not clear yet. He doesn’t seem…
-
Evil Eyes, despite all evidence to the contrary, actually seems like it might be doing something new with Clutching Hand. After an amazing cliffhanger resolution where instead of assaulting Ruth Mix, the clutching hand of the unseen Clutching Hand takes a paper she’s reading. She’s terrified, but no one’s too concerned about it. I mean,…
-
A Cry in the Night refers the the cliffhanger of this chapter. Not the cliffhanger resolve at the open, which is another terrible Clutching Hand resolve, but the one in the very last scene. It’s not clear it’s night out. The cry is more of a scream. Whatever. After the cliffhanger resolution at the beginning,…
-
The Invisible Enemy does indeed feature an invisible enemy. Sort of. It’s the shadow of the Clutching Hand, who despite being the villain for the entire serial, is mentioned with surprise when Jack Mulhall reads another of the Hand’s threatening notes. On one hand (no pun intended), it’s a reminder to the audience. On the…
-
The Invisible Enemy does indeed feature an invisible enemy. Sort of. It’s the shadow of the Clutching Hand, who despite being the villain for the entire serial, is mentioned with surprise when Jack Mulhall reads another of the Hand’s threatening notes. On one hand (no pun intended), it’s a reminder to the audience. On the…
-
Steps of Doom almost opens with a good cliffhanger resolve. It definitely has a couple surprises to it, which the chapter does nothing with after revealing them–even though both beg further explanation–and gets into another bar fight at the waterfront. It raises a third question, just before the fight, which seems important but gets skipped…
-
Clutching Hand is definitely wearing me down. I got through the bad fist fights without thinking too much about their poor execution. And lead Jack Mulhall’s annoying “acting” quirks didn’t annoy as much as usual. It’s just Clutching Hand, why would it get any better five chapters in. The Double Trap of the title refers–I…
-
There’s no reason for The Phantom Car to have its title. There are cars in the chapter, yes, but none of them have any supernatural traits. In fact, the one “mysterious” car-related incident–the chapter’s cliffhanger–explains the gimmick to the viewer while never showing the characters’ peril. Phantom indeed. Car is actually a lot less tedious…
-
It’s another action-packed episode. The action is atrociously executed, but there is definitely a lot of it. After a perfunctory cliffhanger resolution, the Clutching Hand sends more thugs after detective Jack Mulhall and his sidekick, reporter Rex Lease (Lease’s professional makes no difference to the plot–he’s just a sidekick at this point). They come after…
-
There are some amusing moments in Shadows; not good moments, but amusing ones. Like when reporter turned detective sidekick Rex Lease trespasses on a boat and assaults the crew members. It’s a perplexing action sequence–the second fistfight in the (very long) chapter–and incompetently cut together. It culminates with Lease’s adversary clearly jumping into the water…
-
Who Is the Clutching Hand? opens with Robert Walker getting out of prison. The warden warns him not to be a recidivist; Walker tells him he’s going to keep being a crook, he’s just not going to get caught. Is Walker the Clutching Hand? Who knows. The action then moves to a boring board room…
-
For most of its eighty minute runtime, Petticoat Fever operates entirely on charm and technical competence. The charm of its cast, not the charm of Harold Goodman’s screenplay (from Mark Reed’s play). Robert Montgomery is the sole operator of a wireless station in arctic Canada (save Otto Yamaoka as his Inuit servant; the film’s moderately…
-
Dracula’s Daughter starts as a comedy. With Billy Bevan’s bumbling police constable, there’s nothing else to call it. Sure, the opening deals with the immediate aftermath of the original Dracula–returning Edward Van Sloan arrested for driving a stake through a man’s heart–but it’s all for smiles, if not laughs. Bevan’s terrified expressions carry the movie…
-
Rocketing to Earth starts out poorly. The cliffhanger resolution is so lazy star Buster Crabbe remarks on it; clearly someone making Flash Gordon knew they’d run out of resolves. Worse, Crabbe and the gang go right back to Charles Middleton’s palace. The past four or five chapters have just been one failed escape or another–and…
-
Trapped in the Turret is the penultimate chapter of Flash Gordon, which might explain some of its inconsistencies. After a stunt person heavy resolution to the previous cliffhanger, Richard Alexander tells scheming Priscilla Lawson she might just try being nice to Buster Crabbe and Jean Rogers. So she does. And becomes a good guy. Apparently.…
-
Once again, the title refers to a finale item. In the Claws of the Tigron doesn’t have much tigron (a Mongonian tiger), but it does have a lot of invisible Buster Crabbe causing mischief around Charles Middleton’s palace. The chapter’s a tad nonsensical–Crabbe, invisible, terrorizes Middleton’s guards while all his friends hang out in the…
-
Once again, the chapter title doesn’t come into play until the very end–The Unseen Peril, or at least what seems like it, shows up in the last scene. The chapter skips a more dramatic cliffhanger, going on just a few seconds longer to do a puzzling one. Most of the chapter involves Priscilla Lawson’s schemes…
-
This chapter’s title, Fighting the Fire Dragon, makes a big promise. There’s going to be a fire dragon and there’s doing to be a fight against said fire dragon. Only the former proves true. Any fight is, presumably, coming in a subsequent chapter. Thanks, as usual, to Priscilla Lawson’s scheming, Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, and…
The Stop Button 