Author Archive: Retro

Thrown out of the Riviera, a family of grifters meets a lonely, vulnerable rich old woman and insinuate themselves into her life while they sponge off her.

Renfrew of the Royal Mounted rides again in the Criterion/Monogram “northern” Danger Ahead. There’s not a whole lot of plot to speak of, as Renfrew (James Newill) gets involved with a crooked banker (John Dilson) and his raffish henchman (Dick Rich). One of the film’s plusses is the presence of comedienne Dorothea Kent as the heroine. Refusing to take herself or the plotline seriously, Kent is a breath of fresh air in the otherwise formula-bound proceedings. Also good for laughs is Al Shaw, formerly of the Shaw & Lee vaudeville team, as a wisecracking janitor.

Newsman investigates a phony spiritualist who is hynotizing a woman in order to fleece her banker father. Written and Produced by Willis Kent. Dir. Dorothy Davenport (Dorothy Reid), Melville Shyer

A Londoner with the urge to get in front of the footlights, boards in a hotel with a number of theatrical personalities, and when an acrobat is killed, he gets the blame. Dir. James Cruze.

A high-school girl gets involved with a ring of teenage marijuana smokers and starts down the road to ruin. A reporter poses as a soda jerk to infiltrate the gang of teen dope fiends.

Romantic farce about a selfish, tempermental movie star who quits her current film to plot a publicity stunt involving a boxer.

Joe E. Brown was an ideal choice for the character of Alexander Botts, the brash, arrogant “natural born salesman” created for The Saturday Evening Post by William Hazlett Upton. As a representative for the Earthworm Tractor company, Botts tries to convince old-fashioned lumberman Guy Kibbee to buy his newfangled products. Several disastrous slapstick sequences later (including an hilarious setpiece in which Botts unwittingly tows away Kibbee’s entire house!), Botts closes the deal, winning the hand of Kibbee’s daughter June Travis in the process. Despite the character’s unremitting cockiness, Joe E. Brown manages to make Alexander Botts immensely likeable. Earthworm Tractors was the next-to-last film on Joe E. Brown’s Warner Bros. contract, and (with rare exceptions like 1938’s The Gladiator) his last truly worthwhile vehicle of the thirties.

Two Chinese gangsters kidnap and raise a white girl who grows up to be a wicked dragon lady that will stop at nothing to acquire a valuable jewelled dagger. Dir. Stuart Paton

Arthur Kipps is an incredible one dimensional boob and nitwit. Theme that a fool and his money are soon parted.