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Ask a Policeman (1939)
Filmmaker(s): Marcel Varnel

The mirthful adventures of Police-Sergeant Samuel Dudfoot and his two constables, Albert Brown and Jeremias Harbottle, who stage a fabricated crime-wave to save their jobs---and then find themselves involved in the real thing.

Ineptness gang portrayed here is some sort of a triangulation among the Marxes, Stooges and Laurel and Hardy. We love theatrical movie ineptness, especially in policemen and politicians. Especially if the characters are Brits. And this is true it seems even if the audience is...


Published May 16, 2023
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Jungle Jitters (1938)
Filmmaker(s): Friz Freleng

Starts out with a tribe of African cannibals imitating Native Americans. After this, they do the new Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theme "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down." Then a sloppy stuttering salesman knocks on their doors, and they bring him in and put him in a pot of boiling water. The queen of the tribe wants to see the man. She falls in love with him. They get married, but when the salesman sees he has to kiss the bride, he decides he'd be better off being dinner for a tribe of hungry cannibals.

Bamboozled usually see these “banned” things and react variously. I think Amos and Andy, for instance is ennobling, and the often respected “Song of the South” disgusting in it racial typing. This one seems pretty offensive too, especially at the beginning where multi-hued cannibals prance around...


Published November 24, 2022
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Jim Hanvey Detective (1937)
Sly but not slick - Jim Hanvey tops them all! Guy Kibbee ....his most loveable role!
Filmmaker(s): Phil Rosen

Jim Hanvey is a genial but top-notch detective who has retired to his country home. An insurance company hires him to find a missing emerald so they won't have to pay out the $100,000 for which the jewel is insured. It doesn't take him long to find the emerald, but he discovers that finding it was the easy part; the difficult part is getting it back to its rightful owner, and he winds up involved in a murder in which an innocent man is framed.

Straw Dogs can do better than watching most current movies by noodling around with old detective movies from the 30’s. They are generally not very good, but collectively they defined the base for our most common idiom. This one, thankfully, has no racist comedy player....


Published May 13, 2022
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Inside the Room (1935)
Filmmaker(s): Leslie S. Hiscott

A French sleuth in England helps the police solve a series of murders linked by the diary pages of a dead woman.

Clean on Top, Dirty on Bottom are several events in US history that damaged the nation. We will not recover from the Civil War for generations if current politics remain, as they surely will. Prohibition and abortion. Wars. Book burnings. Among these is the Hayes act....


Published August 14, 2022
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The White Cockatoo (1935)
Try to pick the killer, Try to pick the next victim!
Filmmaker(s): Alan Crosland

In a spooky hotel on the coast of France, two bands of crooks are working independently of the other in an attempt to steal the inherited fortune of an American girl, Sue Tally. Along the way the heiress is kidnapped, three murders are committed, a girl appears in two places at once, mysterious persons roam about the old hotel at night and mysteriously disappear, and there is a hidden room without any doors.

Bible Verses pride myself on being able to say something both useful and positive about a film, a discipline a wise man taught as a practice for the more useful challenge with souls we meet. The dynamics overlap in narratives that each carry. I found it...


Published October 2, 2022
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Schlitz On Mount Washington (1935)
Filmmaker(s): Christopher Young

Schlitz is a tourist in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Ignoring posted warnings which say that you shouldn't climb Mount Washington (the tallest mountain in New England) in bad weather, Schlitz pushes onward up the mountain, briefcase in hand. He gets lost in the snow, becomes entangled in mischief spun by a quirky hermit, and finally ends up skiing down Tuckerman's Ravine at perilous speeds, losing his briefcase several times.

Benny Hill’s Slippers would have been one of the shorts on a program designed to fill out a date night. It is just filler, basically slapstick on skis. The joke is that the performer is an extraordinary expert to be able to appear so clumsy....


Published October 9, 2022
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Double Door (1934)
The Female of the Species is More Deadly Than the Male!
Filmmaker(s): Charles Vidor

A domineering money-bags' suppressed incestuous urges go into overdrive when her half-brother brings a new bride home to the family’s gloomy Fifth Avenue mansion. The title refers to a secret soundproofed chamber that the villainess uses to entrap her enemies.

Panic Room the last depression, moviegoers were obsessed with the wealthy. As with the aristocrats in Europe, these folks neither created nor managed wealth. They just had it and wanted more. Here we have a domineering woman who believes she deserves it all, taking from...


Published May 13, 2022
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Blondie Johnson (1933)
LOVE made her beautiful... WANT made her daring... MEN made her ruthless!
Filmmaker(s): Ray Enright

A Depression-downtrodden waif uses her brains instead of her body to rise from tyro con artist to crime boss.

Suckers most of the movies in this period tried to find some new way of telling the detective story, many worked on the gangster side as well. Today, we don’t quite appreciate the cleverness in the variety. I think in part because the things that...


Published January 20, 2024
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Tombstone Canyon (1932)
Filmmaker(s): Alan James

A range lawman (Ken Maynard) unmasks a black-cloaked phantom killer (Sheldon Lewis).

Haunted House meets Mystery meets Western love watching these films from the early thirties. Rarely are they good in the way that I need as a modern viewer. But the story is not the one the movie directly delivers, but the larger story of movies...


Published December 6, 2022
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Perfect Day (1929)
Goodbye...
Filmmaker(s): James Parrott

Two families embark on a pleasant Sunday picnic but manage to run into a variety of issues with their temperamental automobile. Each incident requires repeated exits and reboardings by Laurel, Hardy, their wives and grouchy, gout-ridden Uncle Edgar.

Not Perfect am in the midst of watching a lot of Laurel and Hardy shorts. I’m amazed at a few things. There are over a hundred. They all use the same gag philosophy, often the same gags. And they range from pretty darn funny to...


Published December 24, 2022
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