Jim Hanvey Detective (1937)

Straw Dogs

You 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. It does depend on colourful characters and is staged as a play. The denouement is in a room of suspects, as usual. There is a ‘bait’ angle, also as usual.

We see the influence of a rather strong folding component: many films from this era feature a news reporter whose writing has agency in the mystery. That happens here. A twist that some gangsters are innocent is revealed way to early by modern standards.

No interesting folds.

Posted in 2022

Ted’s Evaluation — 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

IMDB

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