Posts about feature films from Hollywoods classic era.
I recently discovered this film on YouTube. It is one of the rare Abbott and Costello films that I had not seen before. Besides Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, professional wrestlers “Wee Willie” Davis, Sammy Menacker, and Tor Johnson played parts in the film. The film opens with Abbott playing Bud Jones, a wrestling promoter, going over “the script” […]
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At nearly 70 years of age, Stanislaus Zbyszko made his film debut in Night and the City (1950). Billed as Gregorious, a retired wrestler and the father of London’s wrestling promoter, Zbyszko displayed his wrestling skills, even at his advanced age, in the film’s signature scene. The movie begins with a man chasing Harry Fabian, a London hustler always looking […]
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On October 14, 1932, RKO Pictures released The Phantom of Crestwood (1932), the film end to a radio play of the same year. The film concerns the murder of Jenny Wren or more properly “Who Killed Jenny Wren?” Wren, played by Karen Morley, blackmails several prominent men, who carried on affairs with her in the past. One of the men […]
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On January 10, 1927, Universum Film (UFA) released Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The German film company produced a science fiction class, which still holds up today. On the Internet Movie Database website (IMDB), users rate it 8.3 out of 10 stars. It is #104 on the Top 250. In a theme society has wrestled with since the beginning of the […]
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On April 13, 1930, Paramount Pictures released the third Philo Vance film, The Benson Murder Case (1930), starring William Powell as Vance. Paramount Pictures focused the story on a real tragedy for many American at the time, the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Prior to the crash, many Americans were purchasing stocks for one-fourth of their face value. Without getting […]
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Actually, Charlie Chan is in Behind That Curtain (1929) for about five minutes but it is the second film based on an Earl Derr Biggers’ Charlie Chan novel. The first film, The Chinese Parrot (1927) by Paul Leni is considered lost. Today, the movie seems pretty slow, so most reviewers cite it for its historical value and discount any entertainment […]
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Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey were a Broadway comedy team before transitioning to films in 1929. Before Robert Woolsey’s untimely death in 1938, Wheeler and Woolsey made 24 films in 8 years. Half Shot at Sunrise (1930) was the fourth film starring Wheeler and Woolsey. Set in Paris during World War I, Half Shot at Sunrise (affiliate link) tells the […]
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On November 13, 1930, Roland V. West released The Bat Whispers (1930), the talkie version of his silent classic, The Bat (1926). The film follows faithfully the script of the original. However, West is able to experiment with film techniques like tracking shots, still a novelty in early sound cinema. Editing still dominated as the continuity and story moving technique. […]
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Roland V. West bought the rights and directed The Bat (1926), one of the first “old dark house” mysteries for United Artist in 1926. Arthur Edeson was the cinematographer for both this film and The Old Dark House (1932), which share similar Expressionist elements. Both films are set in large mansions, which have seen better days. The key to the […]
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Reginald Owen stars as Sherlock Holmes in one of the early American talking motion picture adaptations of Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet (1933) sees Holmes trying to solve murders among a group of confederates. Arthur Wontner starred in several successful English adaptations of the series, which probably inspired Hollywood to follow suit. Unfortunately, Reginald Owen did not capture the […]
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