Flummoxing Alfred Hitchcock completists for decades, this comic thrilller wouldn’t have felt particularly unfamiliar to audiences of the day after popular fare like THE OLD DARK HOUSE/’32, THE CAT AND THE CANARY/’27 or THE BAT WHISPERS/’30. But would have looked just as bad. Hitch’s comments (in toto) per his seminal interview book HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT: ‘A disaster.’ And yet Hitchcockians need to see it, but will have to sit tight thru the first five reels, stuck in a ‘vacant’ house infested with ‘not’ dead bodies; jewel thieves; undercover cops; a deeply unfunny ‘comic cockney’; ladies with a penchant for furs & handcuffs; and a putative renter with a nose for trouble who bumps into a scam no one could possibly make head or tails of. Under the gaze of a surprisingly mobile camera & pointless visual trick shots hoping to liven things up, business plays out at a glacial pace except for a pair of amusingly undercranked fight scenes. (Did the sound engineer order the cast from picking up their cues?) At last we clear out for the final reel & a half, a dilly of a chase sequence via train and bus. A fabulist’s conception of speed & movement with more cul-de-sacs than a 10-episode serial, setting up a crash of a climax with everything changing over to delightful miniatures, a demented out-of-control toy train set (the deluxe model with the bus); anticipating Orson Welles’ famous quote upon first entering R.K.O. Studios: ‘This is the biggest electric train set any boy ever had.’
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Finally available in pristine condition, marginally helping the drama inside the house before the film comes to life with those glistening trains, both real & toy. Uptick in watchablility comparable to the improvement thru a proper restoration in Paul Leni's THE CAT AND THE CANARY, mentioned above. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/01/cat-and-canary-1927.html
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