The smokily erotic ambience of Josef Von Sternberg's silent Docks of New York is best appreciated on a big theatrical screen--but only if the available print is at the very least second-generation. George Bancroft plays a two-fisted ship's stoker on shore leave. He saves Betty Compson from committing suicide; though the girl displays little ...
Earl Derr Biggers, the creator of Charlie Chan, was responsible for the international-espionage yarn Inside the Lines. The time is WWI, and the place is Gibraltar, where English girl Jane (Betty Compson) is accidentally reunited with her pre-war sweetheart, German-born Wodehouse (Ralph Forbes). Each suspects the other of being an agent for the ...
After the disastrous failure of Queen Kelly, the great silent film director Eric Von Stroheim began to parcel himself out as an actor-for-hire, his directing career in tatters. His first post-Queen Kelly acting job was in this early sound film curio, with Von Stroheim playing The Great Gabbo, a ventriloquist who is gradually going insane, ...
"Exploitation" king Willis Kent was both producer and director of the deathless cautionary fable Mad Youth. Because she doesn't have proper parental supervision, heroine Mary Ainslee falls in with an unsavory crowd and ends up working in a clip joint.Things come to a sorry pass when both Ainslee and her "playgirl" mother Betty Compson find ...
Chesterfield Films, one of the busiest (though not necessarily one of the best) poverty-row operations of the 1930s, was responsible for the amiable comedy August Week-End. 19-year-old Valerie Hobson is top-billed, but the film's real star is G. P. Huntley Jr., playing a British business entrepreneur. Deciding that he's outgrown his bourgeois wife ...
Hoping to start up where he left off before his studio was taken over by the government during WWII, Hal Roach turned out a brief series of "streamliners" (short-length feature films) under the umbrella title Hal Roach's Laff-Time. The third entry in this series was Here Comes Trouble, a Cinecolor attempt to revive a popular Roach military-comedy ...
The first of four Tom Keene westerns for Monogram release, God's Country and the Man is fine, virile stuff in the old William S. Hart tradition. Keene is cast as wandering cavalier Jim, who finds himself in the Tall Timber territory of Canada. Here he runs afoul of scurrilous gunslinger Gentry (Charles King), the scourge of the Mounties. Not only ...
Former Miss America Irene Ware stars in the standard Chestefield Pictures social drama False Pretenses. Ware is cast as lunch-counter waitress Mary Beekman, who intends to crash society and land a wealthy husband. She is helped along by affable millionaire Kenneth Alden (Sidney Blackmer), who loves Mary but won't admit it. Our heroine winds up ...
Filmed on the very cheap, Mystic Circle Murder (aka Religious Racketeers) is distinguished by the presence of Mme. Harry Houdini, in a rare movie appearance. The widow of the famed magician introduces the film by warning the viewer to steer clear of phony psychics who promise to communicate with the dear departed. The story proper then gets under ...
Though Betty Compson is top-billed in Paths to Paradise, the film's real star is the ever-dapper, ever-unflappable Raymond Griffith. We lose our hearts to Griffith in the very first scene, where he passes himself off as a police inspector by flashing a gas meter reader's badge. The plot concerns a jewel heist engineered by Compson and Griffith ...
June Travis plays a trapeze star who becomes the romantic bone of contention between Robert Livingston and Charles Jerome. Silent movie veterans Betty Compson and Charlie Murray lend their expertise to this Republic 7-reeler. The aerialist scenes are performed by the Escalante Family Troupe, who also contributed their breathtaking skills to such ...
Less lurid than its title, Port of Missing Grils was one of several directorial efforts by screenwriter/cinematographer Karl Brown. After being framed for murder, heroine Della (Judith Allen) eludes both the police and the reel killer by stowing away on the freighter skippered by tough-but-kindly Captain Storm (Harry Carey). One she's discovered, ...
Two Minutes to Play is a cheap but energetic Sam Katzman-produced vehicle for Olympic champion Herman Brix. The star plays Martin Granville, an over-aged but undeniably muscular college football hero. Martin finds himself in competition with Jack Gaines (Eddie Nugent) for the affections of cute coed Pat Meredith (Jeanne Martel). In this way, ...
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