Tom and Jerry are cookin' with 'Pots and Pans'

Pots and Pans (1932)
Starring: Unknown Singers
Directors: John Foster and George Rufle
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Another day dawns at Tom and Jerry's Diner. Hash is slung and songs are sung.

"Pots and Pans" debuted in movie theaters on May 15, 1932, and it was the tenth installment in the "Tom and Jerry" series. Our heroes are engaged in yet another business venture in this one--they operate a diner inside a converted railroad car. Subsequently, all the gags and zany action revolve around short-order cooking and the odd characters who are demanding to be fed.

Like most "Tom and Jerry" cartoons, this is essentially an animated music video, with the songs being the main attraction. There is almost no spoken dialogue in the film, and there is one scene where it's disposed of with silent movie-style pantomime. Further, this installment is almost entirely plot-free, with the music and the diner setting serving to string together a series of more-or-less self-contained gags. It's a mostly swift-moving film, and if you have enjoyed other "Tom and Jerry" adventures, you'll enjoy this one as well. The animation is a bit more simplistic than the norm, and the pace falters a bit as the climax is building, but overall it's a solid bit of fun.

But don't just take my word for it... I've embedded "Pots and Pans for your viewing pleasure below!

Tom & Jerry are here for what's 'In the Bag'

In the Bag (1932)
Directors: John Foster and George Rufle
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Tom and Jerry crash their plane in the cartoon wild, wild west. Surreal hi-jinx involving robbery and a vicious outlaw ensue.

"In the Bag" isn't exactly bad... but it isn't exactly good either. It's an unfocused scatter-shot collection of ideas and situations, some of which are related to the western setting, but most of which are generic gags that could work in any picture. Unfortunately, those generic gags are also nonsensical and unfunny; I expect non-sensical in a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon, but I also expect there to be more chuckles than this one delivered. The film also suffers from a sense of being padded, with several, otherwise amusing bits being dragged out to the point of almost outstaying their welcome while the animation loops two or three times with no variation.

The funniest sequences and bits of "In the Bag" come at the very beginning of the film--in the form of the disaster that causes our heroes to crash their plane in the wild west; at roughly the musical number at roughly halfway point involving some very unusual can-can dancers and scat-singing cowboys; and Jerry's heroic chase and capture of film's villain. The film's final series of jokes--in which Jerry designs to double-cross Tom and abscond with a bag full of cash--begin promising but they ultimately fall victim to the same lack of focus that crippled the picture overall and we're left in a closing bit that fizzles instead of sizzles. It's cute, but it doesn't provide a good close to the film, and it's the weakest ending to any of the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons I've watched so far.

"In the Bag" is neither among the best nor the worst entries in this series. I see glimmers of greatness here, but I think it was slapped together either in too big a hurry or with too little care for that greatness to be fully manifested. This causes me to give it the lowest possible rating of Five (on my usual 0-10 scale) that I can award it. It also causes me to observe that this is an all-too-common problem with "Tom and Jerry" and one of the reasons why they are not well-remembered today.

But how about you take a look at "In the Bag" and share what you think of it? You can watch it below, and leave a comment to this post, or pop on over to my Facebook page and speak up there!

Tom & Jerry destroy the fourth wall

Pencil Mania (1932)

Starring: Margie Hines (various voices)

Directors: John Foster and Geo. Stallings

Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

To Tom's amazement (and annoyance), Jerry uses a pencil to alter the reality of their cartoon universe in extreme ways.

"Pencil Mania" starts with Tom painting a portrait of a dancing cow, which is really not that strange an activity for a character who's flirted with mermaids at the bottom of the ocean. It's when Jerry pulls out a pencil and starts creating animations within the animated world, dispelling the 3D illusion of the animated world and revealing it's just flat lines moving at 32 frames a second.

This is one of those films that really needs to be experienced cold, and I can only spoil it by saying too much. In fact, the moment I chose to illustrate this post is a bit of a spoiler in itself--but it's milder than some of the things that precede it.

While an animated character breaking the fourth wall by taking advantage of the fact he exists in a two dimensional world where lines are put down to create an illusion of depth--Felix the Cat did it on a regular basis during the second half of the 1920s-- the extremes to which this idea is taken in "Pencil Mania" keep compounding until the film's finale where the fourth wall isn't just broken, it's completely demolished and the fragments are ground to dust and scattered on the four winds.

"Pencil Mania" is a wild and unpredictable ride from beginning to end. If you enjoy cartoons from the early sound era, surreal humor, or are just in the mood for something a strange and funny, you won't regret watching it from this very post, right here and now.

Tom & Jerry are up to 'Tightrope Tricks'

Tight Rope Tricks (1933)
Starring: Bonnie Poe (Voice of Female Tightrope Walker)
Directors: John Foster and George Rufle
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Tom and Jerry perform musical stunts on the tightrope and cause chaos at the circus.

"Tightrope Tricks" is another of the middle-of-the-pack entries in the "Tom and Jerry" series. There's nothing about it that's particularly outstanding, nor is there anything about it that's particularly bad. It's just a breezy and fairly mindless bit of entertainment.

In fact, it's so mindless that the writers didn't even pay much attention to the details of the already thin story. The set-up seems to waver back and forth between Tom and Jerry being actual circus performers and being members of the public who are just causing trouble on the grounds. After marching in the circus' parade (as if they are members of the troupe), they mess with an elephant and torment a lion (like obnoxious members of the pubic), perform on the high-wire (as if they are part of an established act), and so on. While either mode in which the main characters function leads to some amusing gags (even if I found myself rooting for the lions rather than the "heroes" during the film's climax), it really feels like two separate films were merged into one here.

One curious detail about "Tightrope Tricks" that's worth noting is illustrated below, with images taken from the scene where Tom changes into tights:

Either Tom likes wearing women's underwear, or he's actually a she! It doesn't make a difference one way or another for most of the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons, but it's a weird detail I think. It's certainly something one would only find a Pre-Code cartoon! Or am I misinterpreting Tom's undergarments? Why don't you take a few minutes and watch the cartoon for yourself and let me know what you think.

'Half Shot at Sunrise' is more than halfway decent

Half Shot at Sunrise (1930)
Starring: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Dorothy Lee, Leni Stengel, George MacFarlane, Edna May Oliver, and Jack Rutherford, and Edgar DeLange
Director: Paul Sloane
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A couple soldiers (Wheeler and Woolsey) are having the time of their lives AWOL in Paris during WWI, ducking MPs and happily hitting on every woman they see. When one of them  falls in love with the Colonel's teenaged daughter (Lee), and she decides to help his military career, things start to get complicated.

"Half Shot at Sunrise" is a supremely silly movie  that is light on plot but heavy on shenanigans and clever quips and offhanded double-entrendres. You'll hardly notice the lack of plot though, as Wheeler and Woolsey keep the jokes and tricks flowing non-stop, and when Dorothy Lee is added to the mix things get even wilder. If you like madcap military comedies, I think you'll enjoy this film quite a bit.

That said, it's not a perfect movie. The main drawback are the songs/musical numbers--which are . They are not all that good, and they interrupt the film's momentum and stop it dead in its tracks. I did enjoy the goofy dance routines that came with each song, but they were not enough to make up for the lameness of the music. These dragged my rating of this otherwise fun movie down from a low Eight to what was almost a Six on my 0-10 scale.

Another flaw was a serious romantic subplot involving the colonel's oldest daughter and a straight-laced Army lieutenant that ran along side the antics of the three main characters. While it served as a nice counterpoint to the Wheeler/Woolsey/Lee clown show, and brought a little dimension to some of the supporting characters, it really just made me wish for more of the clown show. It wasn't as damaging to the flow of the film as the weak musical numbers, but it didn't really add that much in the final analysis.

"Half Shot at Dawn" is one of nine films included in the Wheeler and Woolsey: RKO Comedy Classics Collection. That collection is a broad sampling of their films for RKO that stretches from the beginning of their contract until its end, and it includes some of their biggest hits.

It's Tom and Jerry... and they're in 'Trouble'!

Trouble (1931)
Starring: Anonymous Voice Actors and Singers
Directors: John Foster and George Stallings
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Tom and Jerry are ambulance-chasing attorneys looking for a way to drum up business for their firm.

In "Trouble", we see Tom and Jerry making a go at being lawyers, one of the many professions they will work in over the course of the series. Out of their various career choices, this may be the most ill-considered, given they live in a world inhabited by rubbery beings who can transform physically on a whim and who can fall from great heights, get blown up, sink to the bottom of the ocean, and otherwise have disasters happen to them that should be fatal but doesn't leave a scratch or a bruise. 

During the six-minute running time of this film, we get to see our heroes sing about their law practice, engage in a clever attempt at guerilla marketing, and literally chase an ambulance when they think they have a lead on a client who is about to fall from the top of the Empire State Building following a botched docking attempt by a zeppelin. The concluding (and funniest) gag is at once a masterful bit of fourth-wall humor, as well as a reinforcement of my opening thought: Accident lawyers in Tom and Jerry's world have a difficult time making a living.

As "Tom and Jerry" cartoons go, this one is pretty mild. The music is fairly unremarkable, the gags mild and, with the exception of the one at the end, predictable. Nothing here is bad... it's just average. (But you can judge for yourself; take a few minutes and watch "Trouble" right now!)





One general thought about most cartoons of this era (late 1920s through the early 1930s) that often occurs to me but I forget to mention when writing these posts, is how they are essentially silent movies. Yes, there's music and singing and sound effects, but what passes for dialogue in minimal and often nothing more than sounds that are word-like but not actual words... or just stay words mixed in with mumbles and squeaks. I wonder how aggressively the studios that produced them pursued foreign markets. While there are unique American cultural and political references in them, it still seems they would have works almost as well in European nations.)

'The Phantom of Crestwood' is a dark, gruesome murder mystery

The Phantom of Crestwood (1932)
Starring: Ricardo Cortez, Karen Morely, Anita Louise, Matt Kemp, H.B. Warner, Pauline Frederick, Ivan Simpson, and Richard "Skeets" Gallagher
Director: J. Walter Ruben
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A high-class prostitute, Jenny Wren (Morely), decides to fund her retirement by shaking down five rich and powerful men who have been regular :clients". When one of them murders her rather than submit to blackmail, infamous gangster Gary Curtis (Cortez) must identify the killer before the police arrive and pin it on him.

"The Phantom of Crestwood" is a much better movie than its gimmicky origins leads one to believe: It's a film version of a radio-play that ended on a cliffhanger and an invitation for listeners to submit their ideas for who committed the murder. (That makes this film a literal Radio Picture!)

It didn't really matter what listeners submitted, because the entire script was already done--something that was made clear in the contest--but I was still surprised at how dark, gruesome, and adult-oriented the film was, given the way it was promoted. The film is populated almost entirely by shady and unpleasant characters; the murder method is particularly vicious--and the death happens on screen (!); and the closest thing to a hero we have is a coldblooded killer who is only trying to solve the crime so he can save his own neck. It's what I imagine a film by the likes of Quentin Tarintino might have been if he'd been around in 1930s, with its dark nature and lively, non-stop stream of witty dialogue.

If you like your 1930s mysteries on the dark side, I think you'll find the 75-minutes you'll spend watching "The Phantom of Crestwood" to be time very well spent. The performances given by Ricardo Cortez and Karen Moreley almost make watching the film on their own. There's an added bonus in that the mystery surrounding the murder of Jenny Wren is both complex, a little tragic, and makes perfect sense when all the pieces come to light... a combination of elements that aren't often found in these old pictures.

'Joint Wipers' is fun but not great

Joint Wipers (1932)
Starring: Anonymous Voice Actors (but there aren't many spoken lines)
Directors: John Foster and George Stallings
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Tom and Jerry are plumbers who are better at singing and dancing than fixing leaky pipes.

"Joint Wipers" is a so-so entry in the very uneven Tom and Jerry series. The animation is fluid and inventive, the situations are fairly bizarre and amusing, but there aren't any WOW! moments like there are in some of the others, and it doesn't have outstanding music like in "Piano Tooners" and "Redskin Blues". It's fun few minutes, but it's not much more than that. Further, and this is perhaps because this entry isn't as wild as others, some of the sequences drag a bit.

But don't just take my word for whether this cartoon is funny or not. Check it out for yourself, below, and let me know whether you agree or disagree with my take on it!

'Rocketeers' is something of a misfire

Tom and Jerry: Rocketeers (1932)
Starring: Anonymous Voice Actors
Directors: John Foster and George Rufle
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Tom and Jerry build an experimental rocket intending to go to the Moon. After the rocket misfires, out heroes instead find themselves exploring a strange world at the bottom of the sea and frolicking with mermaids.

The title made me excited for this one, and I hoped I was in for surreal sci-fi weirdness similar to "Astronomeous" or "The '?' Motorist". Instead... well, let's just say I was disappointed. This Tom and Jerry installment has the crisp, fluid animation that I so love in this series, as well as a hefty amount of the cartoon physics and physical transformations that I love in many of the cartoons from the late 1920s and early 1930s, but I just couldn't enjoy this one.

I can't really point to something that made me cringe or that I found boring--I just wasn't engaged with the one I the way I've been with some of the other "Tom and Jerry" installments. Maybe it's because I can't watch it through th eyes of a 6 year-old, and so I couldn't get past the notion of Tom and Jerry surviving, not to mention singing and dancing and playing the piano, on the bottom of the ocean as easily as they would on land. Maybe it's because the music wasn't as good in this one as in some of the others. I don't know... I just couldn't get into this one the way I did with "The Piano Tooners", for example.

That said... "Rocketeers" did contain both the most horrific scene I've ever encountered in a cartoon, as well as one of the cutest. The first involves Tom and Jerry merging into a single, singing creature, while the second is them dancing and singing with mermaids. The unbridled insanity of cartoons from the late 1920s and early 1930s is both the stuff of dreams and nightmares...

Why don't you take a few minutes out of your day and check out "Rocketeers" for yourself? I've embedded it below for your convience and viewing pleasure. I would also love to hear your opinions!

'Redskin Blues' is full of toe-tapping music and weirdness

Redskin Blues (1932)
Starring: Anonymous Voice Actors
Director: John Foster and George Stallings
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Tom and Jerry are chased and captured by a hostile Native American warriors. Is this the end of our heroes?

Some of the cartoons starring the original "Tom & Jerry" duo are just plain awful,others have not aged well, but a few are full of funky weirdness that lasts throughout the ages and which should be as amusing to viewers now as they were 85+ years ago. "Plane Dumb", for example, is so full of racist stereotypes that it even made this indifferent-to-all-your-FeeFees GenXer cringe (although given the inexplicable and casual nature of the extreme transformation of the characters into a pair Step-n-Fetchit/Sleep-N-Eat clones, I wonder if there might not be a pop cultural reference/context/connection that's been muted by the passing decades).

When I first started watching "Redskin Blues",  which was released immediately after "Plane Dumb" in 1932, I feared I was in for another festival of racism. Our heroes are under attack by Indians, all of whom are wearing war bonnets... but this one veers off into unexpected territory, beginning with the war bonnets becoming the starting point of some surreal action and continuing straight through to an ending I am sure no viewer will see coming.

Now, I'm certain there are things in this cartoon that those out there who are looking for something to take offense at will need a fainting ouwill be clutching their pearls over, especially in the light of the cartoon's title and the fact the Native Americans are the villains of the story. (Well... as much as anyone can be a villain in this bit of nonsense.)

In the final analysis, I think there may be a couple of interesting points floating around in the madness that is "Redskin Blues"--music bridges cultural gaps, to name one--although I could also be assigning meaning to this cartoon the way I might see a wild boar riding a butterfly in one of those ink blot tests. At the very least, it's a crazy and entertaining cartoon that you can watch it right here, right now, via embedding from YouTube.

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Musical Monday with Tom & Jerry

In 1931, the Van Beuren Studios launched the Tom and Jerry series of animated shorts. Stylistically, the series inhabits a middle-ground between Felix the Cat of the 1920s and the first few years of Betty Boop cartoons... but they often manage to be more trippy than even what those series had to offer. Tom and Jerry didn't enjoy the popularity of those other characters, though, and their adventures came to an end in 1933.

By Milton Knight

There were 26 Tom and Jerry cartoons released. The good ones are very good, but the bad ones... oh, my God! The bad ones are so bad that even the audiences of the 1930s must have been bored or perhaps even offended by them.

Right now, though, I'm going to give my thoughts on the best Tom and Jerry cartoon I've watched so far. It's embedded below, so you, too, can watch it right here. I think you'll find it will brighten you day!



Piano Tooners (1932)
Starring: Margie Hines (various voices)
Director: John Foster and George Ruffle
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A pair of zany piano tuners step up to save a opera diva's recital and end up turning it jazzy.

"Piano Tooners" is a cheerful cartoon with fun musical numbers and playful visuals that will keep you smiling from from the opening song through the grand finale where the big-boosmed diva literallyblows the roof of house. In between, we're treated to dancing, piano-playing mice, one of the weirdest music recital ever put on film, a maid transforming into a jazz singer, and Tom and Jerry's innovative piano-tuning techniques.

The experience of watching is further enlivened by a steady stream of visual side gags that come and go in the blink of an eye, as well as miscellaneous comedic nonsense that ranges from cute to risque. I was particularly amused by all the gags involving the diva, and I found the bits with the mice very cute.

But take a look for yourself. Let me know what you think of it, either here or on my Facebook page!

It's a sweet time on the Silvery Moon

From the studio that introduced the world to Felix the Cat comes a tale of sweet, sweet adventure...


Silvery Moon (aka "Candy Town") (1933)
Starring: Bonnie Poe
Directors: Mannie Davis and John Foster
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A pair of cats are magically teleported to the Moon where they find a realm inhabited by friendly creatures where everything is edible and made from candy and ice cream!

"Silvery Moon" (or "Candy Town" as it is more widely known) is a cute, nonsensical, and nearly plotless cartoon. I kept expecting it to take a dark turn--as I am used to in the Betty Boop cartoons, which this both looks and sounds like, but none ever came. Instead, it remained goofy and as sweet as the candy in the world that cats are transported to.

I assume the target audience for this film in the 1930s was little kids, and I think it might be something they'd get a kick out of even today. However, it's fast-moving enough, and just surreal  enough that adults watching it with them will at least be mildly entertained. It could have benefitted immensely from being in color, however.)

You can see if I'm right or wrong in my estimation, right here in this very post since I've embedded the film below, via YouTube.


(With Halloween approaching, you should probably be thinking about candy, too. Are you ready for the onslaught of trick-or-treaters?)

The Ladies of 'Hips, Hips, Horray!'

So many of the publicity photos for the 1934 RKO musical comedy "Hips, Hips Horray!" feature cuties wearing next to nothing that I was surprised to learn that the film revolves around competing cosmetic companies and flavored lipstick.

These photos should REALLY be promoting a film about goofy bellhops at a resort for people looking for "mature fun" and guests whose luggage and/or clothes they lose.

(I wish I could tell you who is who in the pictures, but I see conflicting information as to the identities of the girls on display. If someone wants to take a crack at ID'ing them, drop me an email, or leave a comment.)

'Hips, Hips, Horray!' is worth a cheer

Hips, Hips, Horray! (1934)
Starring: Robert Woolsey, Bert Wheeler, Dorothy Lee, Thelma Todd, George Meeker, Phyllis Barry, and Dorothy Granger
Director: Mark Sandrich
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Small-time inventors of a flavored lipstick (Woolsey and Wheeler), on the hunt for love and money, con their way into a partnership with a large cosmetics firm, Maid in America.

"Hips, Hips, Horray!" is one of those early 1930s comedies full of a variety of sexual innuendos, scantily clad women, and jokes and gags that made the censorship boards of the day gasp with outrage, and which will make their 21st century spiritual successors shriek with horror. It's also a film that makes no pretenses about the fact that it's main purpose is to be entertaining and outrageous. It features only the thinnest of plots that, even though it's well-crafted enough to include all the elements of the Three Act structure, never really gives the viewer any doubt that every thing will work out find for our heroes and their love interests, the owner of Maid in America (Thelma Todd), whose firlm is being sabotaged from within, and her employee and confidant (Dorothy Lee, who was essentially was the third member of the W&W team).

Although, like I mentioned, this film's main purpose is to entertain and be outrageous, there's a little more going on here than just antics, as a good portion of the film is devoted to making fun of the chorus-girl filled song-and-dance numbers that were so typical in movies at the time.

The film opens with one such production number that is so over-the-top, and so filled with naked women, concealed only by bath bubbles or cosmetic products strategically placed in the camera shot, that even the most prudish of viewers (then and now) should be able to get a chuckle out of it. Later, in what is arguably the film's greatest sequence, where Wheeler & Lee and Woolsey & Todd, respectively declare their love and lust for each other through song (the catchy tune "Keep Doing What You're Doing") and then start doing a choreographed dance during which they trash an elegant office. The song is pretty standard fare for films of this period--even if, once again, the innuendo button is being mashed firmly and often--but the dance routine is a hilarious, small-scale send-up of those insanely elaborate Busby Berkeley production numbers.

In addition to the musical production number send-ups, "Hips, Hips, Horray!" features a cartoonish sequence where our heroes accidentally end up driving the car that's taking part in a cross-country race to promote Maid in America. It's bit jarring the way the movie suddenly shifts from being a fairly grounded satire confined to corporate offices to a zany racing comedy where cars can get swept up in tornadoes and Kansas and safely deposited in the Rocky Mountains, the material is funny enough... although it also cost the movie a Star on my Ratings System. Because the movie ends with a car race, Thelma Todd and Dorothy Lee are completely sidelined and given nothing worthwhile to do during this finale--which is a shame, because they already had very little to do in the picture. Given the slight plot in this film--which, as I mentioned, is mostly here to move us from gag to gag--it's almost a given that Todd has very little to do in the picture at all (and Lee only slightly more-so), because she put on an excellent show in her previous teaming with Wheeler and Woolsey, the more plot-driven "Cockeyed Cavaliers".

"Hips, Hips Horray!" is one of nine films included in the Wheeler and Woolsey: RKO Comedy Classics Collection.

'Cockeyed Cavaliers' has hits and misses

Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934)
Starring: Robert Woolsey, Bert Wheeler, Dorothy Lee, Thelma Todd, Noah Beery, and Robert Greig
Director: Mark Sandrich
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A pair of wandering rogues (Woolsey and Wheeler) pass themselves off as physicians from the King's Court and insinuate themselves into the household of the local lord (Greig). In between hitting on his sister (Todd) and trying to help a young woman who has disguised herself as a boy (Lee) in order to avoid a forced marriage to the lord, they are constantly struggling to avoid giving themselves away by being too stupid.

"Cockeyed Cavaliers" is a movie of highs and lows. When it is funny, it is very funny. When the jokes fail to land, they crash and leave big craters.

I can't decide if it's the style of the performances in the film, or the material that gets in the way when the movie starts sliding in the direction of crappy, so it may be a combination of both. And there's one area where the costume designers and make-up artists didn't go quite far enough to make an aspect of the film convincing.

First, let's start with the script, the songs, and the jokes.

Story-wise, the script is solid, nicely paced, and consisting of several intertwining plots that provide our heroes with plenty of challenges to overcome--including their own stupidity. The romantic subplot between Bert Wheeler and Dorothy Lee's characters--which starts when everyone believes Lee to be a boy--is interesting and ultimately leads straight into the film's conclusion and resolution of all the various problems; and the danger posed by Robert Woolsey's inability to not be randy around the wife of the very jealous and very violent baron (Thelma Todd and Noah Beery respectively) give rise to an equal amount of comedy and tension. The pieces are all very well arranged to maximize both the comedic and dramatic value of the plot elements and the characters in them.

Unfortunately, two out of the film's three major musical numbers aren't all that great. In fact, the song that opens the movie--performed by gossiping villagers and setting up a few major plot points--was so lame that if I wasn't watching this movie as part of the "Year of the Hot Toddy" project, I might have found something else to do with my time. The second song ("The Big Bad Wolf is Dead"), performed by our heroes, the films kinda-sorta villain, and the staff and guests at an inn, is better, but it goes on for entirely too long and the parts that are supposed to be funny mostly fail to launch or fail and crash. The third and final song ("Dilly Dally")--a combination song and dance number performed by Wheeler & Lee and Woolsey & Todd, in pars and together as a group--is, however, extremely entertaining on every level. It's well worth the wait. In some ways, this song even reflects the trajectory of the movie; it starts shaky, but firms up at about the halfway point, and really delivers during the third act. (This is of course better than the opposite.)

Despite the film getting better as it goes, the comedy remains uneven. It is not until we reach the climax--with a high society party, a wild boar hunt, and an even wilder chase scene--that every joke and physical comedy bit comes off well. Up to that point, some of the comedy routines fall flat because the jokes are weak and delivery feels like Wheeler and Woolsey (or whoever their "straight man" is) are performing a routine on stage. While other similar comedians--like the Marx Brothers and, later, Abbott & Costello, were literally taking routines perfected on stage and porting them into films, when watching them, I rarely have the feeling that a waiter is about to lean in and ask for my drink order the way I felt with nearly ever bit in this film. In fact, the scenes that worked the best were the ones where the comedy arose from the situation as much as it did from the back and forth between characters. For example, every scene Woolsey shares with Todd varies from chuckle-worthy to laugh-out-loud funny, especially when the action is revolving around Todd's cleavage.

In fact, I think the only thing that ruined this film for me more than the nightclub-style delivery of many of the jokes was the fact that I simple could not buy Dorothy Lee as a boy. Sure, she was in man's clothing, but the characters would have to be both blind and stupid to not recognize that she was female. This is a shame, because there are some funny jokes tied to the cross-dressing element which would have been even funnier if more of an effort had gone into making it work. I mean, would it really have been that hard to give Lee a hairstyle more in keeping with what her character was pretending to me? Or perhaps putting her in a shirt and vest that were even looser and a little longer?

There are so many things I like about this film that I wish I could have liked the end result more. Aside from the stand-up feel of some of the delivery, every actor in the film is great in their parts. It's easy to see why Dorothy Lee played opposite Wheeler & Woolsey in just about every movie they made, because they make an excellent trio. And, although she had more than come into her own as a comedienne by the time she made this movie, Thelma Todd is mostly used here as the "straight man" for everyone else to play off... and she does that just as well here as she did when she filled that role in her earliest films with Charley Chase. Meanwhile, Noah Beery and Robert Greig are equal parts funny and melodramatically villainous as the film's corpulent bad guys. The production values in this period film are also top-notch, as are the special effects and stunts during the film's climax. And I adored every second of the aforementioned "Dilly Dally" routine. Still, I can't bring myself to give this film more than a high Six Rating.

"Cockeyed Cavaliers" is one of six films in the Wheeler & Woolsey RKO Comedy Classics Vol. 2 set, which features a mix of movies Wheeler & Woolsey made as a team and individually.

This 'Conspiracy' isn't worth uncovering

Conspiracy (1930)
Starring: Bessie Love, Ned Sparks, Hugh Trevor, Gertrude Howard, Rita La Roy, and Donald MacKenzie
Director: Christy Cabanne
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

After killing a drug kingpin, Margaret (Love) is hiding from both the drug syndicate and the police, her identity as the killer still unknown. Then a crime writer turned amateur detective, "Little Nemo" (Sparks), decides to solve the case, gets onto her trail, and may expose her to cops and crooks alike.

When I reviewed "The Sawdust Ring", I said that I could easily see why D.W. Griffith was sure Bessie Love was going to be a star from the moment he first saw her, and why she did indeed become a huge star during the 1920s. In that film, she had a certain charisma that almost seemed to make her leap off the screen. In "Conspiracy", however, very little of that aura is evident... in fact, the performance she gives here barely distinguishes her from a generic "damsel in distress"-type character. (I might even argue that her performance seems a bit off, since she's playing a character who's been undercover with a drug gang for several months. Sure, she's just stabbed someone to death as the film starts, and later she's been cooped up with an obnoxious asshole for two weeks, but I would still expect something more than confusion and panic to each and every situation she encounters.)

Perhaps Love was modulating her performance to be complimentary to the boring, bland stock hero played by Hugh Trevor. Maybe she was trying to be lowkey so Ned Sparks' supremely annoying, grumpy old man character would seem even more annoying and grumpy. Or maybe she knew she was in a badly directed third-rate movie with a weak script full of squandered opportunities and only one mildly interesting twist, and she wasn't giving it her all. Whatever the reason, there are only two times in "Conspiracy" where we see glimmers of the Love that graced the screen 15 years earlier: During the obligatory insta-romance-sparking scene where she tells her tale of woe to Trevor's dull alleged man of action, and during the scene where Sparks' character threatens to turn her over to the police, and she in turn threatens to bash his brains in with a paperweight.

Still, even if Love had given the performance of her career, she probably couldn't have saved this movie which leads with its very best scenes and then steadily goes down hill. The biggest problem here, really, is that the filmmakers couldn't decide if they were making a comedy or a thriller or a melodrama; or if the central character was Margaret, Love's caught-in-the-middle woman on the run; Little Nemo, Sparks' annoying and obnoxious and played-strictly-for-laughs crime writer; or Trevor's boring feature section reporter. It also doesn't help the movie that anything remotely suspenseful happens off-screen or in a flashback (where we already know the outcome).

As terrible as this movie is, and as disappointed as I was with Bessie Love's performance, I did keep watching. Ned Sparks as Little Nemo was entertaining in a train-wreck sort of way... and I watched with captivated awe while Sparks and Gertrude Howard (as Little Nemo's beleaguered black housekeeper) played through a series of comedic (but extremely unfunny) and deeply racist exchanges. Also, Rita La Roy's femme fatal-ish character that shows up at about the halfway point as an agent of the drug ring trying to milk Little Nemo for information and seduce him into turning Margaret over to the gang when he finds her, was a lot of fun.

Unless you're a huge Ned Sparks fan (I think this was the closest this accomplished character actor ever came to playing the lead); want an opportunity to be able to tell exactly how brilliant Bessie Love is in some of her other roles; or are looking for an old movie with some racists scenes to fill you with righteous outrage, there are far better movies to spend your time on. (But if you do decide to check it out, I recommend you watch it for free on YouTube.)

Horror movie giants at their best

The Body Snatcher (1945)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell, Russell Wade, Bela Lugosi, and Edith Atwater
Director: Robert Wise
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

In this loose adaptation of a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, a young medical student (Wade) becomes drawn into the twisted relationship between a brilliant but coldhearted surgeon (Daniell) and a strange coachman who moonlights as a body snatcher to provide the doctor with research specimens (Karloff).

"The Body Snatcher" is a one-stop spot to discover why producer Val Lewton, actor Boris Karloff and director Robert Wise are held in such high regard by horror movie fans and filmmakers.

Lewton's touch is all over this film, and there is barely a scene that doesn't feature terror technqiues that filmmakers copy and rely on to this very day. Karloff gives one of the very best performances of his career, oozing greasy charm and quiet menace with every word and gesture. And then there's the very chilling scene where he's just choked a man to death, is sitting over the corpse, and then reaches out to stroke his pet cat. And, finally, Wise mounts a brilliantly structured film where the mystery and tension keeps mounting until the end, and every scene is perfectly paced, framed and lit. Much gets said about film noir, but the use of light and shadow in black and white horror films like this one is far more important that in crime dramas, and here Wise uses the medium to perfection.

And, of course, the stars are backed up by an excellent supporting cast, including Bela Lugosi in his final horror role for a major studio. Lugosi's role is small, but he brings a level of raw creepiness to his character, creepiness born more of stupidity than the evil that wafts from Karloff's character.

In retrospect, the fact that Lugosi dies in a very key scene in the film is something of an allegory for his career, as well as Karloff's. In the scene in question, Lugosi ends up dead on the floor and Karloff reaches out to pet a cat in a very creepy moment. This was the second-to-last film Lugosi made for a major studio, and his career and life were mostly a downward spiral from here, while Karloff's career in horror films continued to flourish.

It's the end of the road for Hildegarde Withers

Forty Naughty Girls (1937)
Starring: James Gleason, ZaSu Pitts, Frank M. Thomas, Joan Woodbury, Alan Edwards, Tom Kennedy, Marjorie Lord,  and Stephen Chase
Director: Edward F. Cline
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

Oscar and Hildegarde (Gleason and Pitts) are enjoying a night at the theatre when not one but two murders happen during the show... the second one taking place on stage, in full view of the entire audience and cast and crew backstage.

This was the last of the Hildegarde Withers films, and it is also the weakest. While it's not terrible, it is far down the quality scale from where the series began with "The Penguin Pool Murders." Where there is plenty to like here, the good does not quite outweigh the bad.

First, the good: Someone working on the film during pre-production finally remembered that Oscar and Hildegarde are involved in a relationship, and they used it as a central motivator to get the story started. Also, the film has a strong supporting cast, with Tom Kennedy (basically playing the same dumb cop he portrays in the "Torchy Blane" series), Joan Woodbury (at the height of her B-movie stardom, playing an actress who was in a love triangle between the first murder victim and the show'd producer, a friend of Oscar's), and Marjorie Lord (at the very beginning of her career in a small but crucial part) shining particularly brightly. In fact, Kennedy is so amusing in this picture that I found myself wishing that he was star rather than James Gleason.

And that takes us to the bad. While the writers may  have remembered that Oscar and Hildegarde are a couple, but they forgot they were intelligent people, and that they worked as a team (mostly) when solving crimes. That has been completely lost in the script for "Forty Naughty Girls". What has also been lost is any unique flavor that was present in previous installments of this series. While the Hildegarde Withers films were always B-movies, this is the first one that felt like it was just another cheap mystery/comedy, with a dumb cop bumbling his way through his "investigation" while a clever trickster actually solves the crime. (Except in this case, the trickster--Hildegarde--is just as big a bumbler as Ocsar is portrayed as.) Oscar spends the movie making wild accusations with almost no evidence--and is proven wrong either by himself or other characters, while Hildegarde pratfalls her way to uncovering clues. While amusing--especially since the comedy does play to ZaSu Pitts' strengths as a performer--it doesn't serve the characters nor the Hildegarde Withers series well. It doesn't even serve the film itself well but just drags it down.

"Forty Naughty Girls" could have been a very clever mystery where the main characters have to solve a double murder in real time, as the musical the film is named after unfolds on stage. It also had all the pieces to return the characters of Oscar Piper and Hildegarde Withers to the height of dorky coolness they were at when the series started. Heck, given the strong supporting cast, this film had all the elements to make it the best in the series. Instead, all those quality ingredients were slapped together lazily and sloppily and the end result was just another generic 1930s comedy-mystery... and instead of going out on a high note, the "Hildegarde Withers Mysteries" series ended almost as bad as it got. (It's better than "Murder on the Bridle Path", but only because it's funnier.)

Ending a series on a low note

Wig-Wag (1935)
Starring: Dorothy Granger, Jack Mulhall, Grady Sutton, Jane Darwell, and Carol Tevis
Director: Sam White
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

After his fiance (Granger) breaks their engagement just before the wedding, Jack (Mulhall) decides to win her back by making her jealous. To do this, he convinces his friend Grady (Sutton) to dress up like a woman and pretend to be his new bride.

Aside from the very first installment, this is the weakest entry in the "The Blonde and the Redhead" series. It's almost as if the series came full circle, but in the worst possible way.

The problem with "Wig-Wag" is that it wants to rely on slapstick humor, but what it offers in that department is executed without energy and in a very feeble fashion. I don't know if it was under-rehearsed or ad-libbed on the set, but the performers weren't leaning into it. Nor was the production department for that matter; sometimes, slapstick is made funnier with exaggeration through sound effects... but that wasn't done here.

The filmmakers would have done viewers a service if they'd focused more on dialogue and characters here. I suppose they did as much with homosexuality and gender roles as they could in the 1930s, but the scenes where the cross-dressing Grady is in "danger" are the most amusing, especially the awkward kissing scenes. These scenes also contain the only truly funny lines in the film, with the "She's the biggest thing to come into my life" being prime among them. (And Sutton is BIG in this picture, given they put an already tall man in heels.)

As for the actors, they seem to be giving it their best, considering what they're working with. Jack Mullhall and Dorothy Grangers are the stars here, with Grady Sutton supporting them nicely; he is mostly serves as the straight man, which is an odd phrase to say about a hulking cross-dresser. Carol Tevis' role is the smallest she's had in any of the episodes, whether it be screen-time or role in the plot. She could have been left out entirely, and it wouldn't have made a difference.

"Wig-Wag" is the fourth and final short included on the second DVD collection of these RKO short films. It's the most risque of them humor-wise, but, as mentioned, it's also one of the worst when it comes to execution. Still, this is a collection worth checking out, as it also contains two of the best entries in the series, "Bridal Bail" and "Contented Calves".

The 'Ocean Swells' bring laughter

Ocean Swells (1934)
Starring: Zeffie Tilbury, Dorothy Granger, Carol Tevis, Grady Sutton, Cully Richards, Landers Stevens, and Edgar Dearing
Director: George Stevens
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

While on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation on Catalina Island, three laundry workers (Granger, Tevis, and Tilbury) pose as high society ladies. When the two younger ones meet a pair of handsome rich men (Richards and Sutton), and are mistaken for relatives of a wealthy yacht owner, the women decide to take full advantage of the situation. Unfortunately for them, the wealthy young men are also just posing...

The sixth installment in RKO's "The Blonde and the Redhead" non-series series (a "non-series" in the sense that while the same core performers are featured in most of them, they are playing different characters in each film) is different from previous ones in a couple different ways. First, June Brewster has been replaced as the Redhead by Dorothy Granger. This change is hardly noticeable, except Granger's comedic timing is better than Brewster's (which could go a long way to explaining why Granger's career continued into the 1950s and Brewster's was essentially over at this point). Secondly, the actual lead here is Zeffie Tilbury, both in the sense that she's the instigator of plot complications as well as portraying the character with the most lines and screen time. Usually, its some lie or clever idea from one of the "girls" that gets them in trouble. It's only fair that Tilbury should get to take center stage in this film--she had been performing on stage and in films for 20 years when this film was made--but it's still an unusual move, given the formula of the series.

"Ocean Swells" is a comedy of errors and it's very amusing even while being absolutely predictable. From the moment "Auntie" (Tilbury) promises that she's going to hook her young friends (Dorothy Granger and Carol Tevis) up with rich men, viewers have a sense of where this film is going to end up. As is often the case in the "The Blonde and the Redhead" series, the stakes keep getting higher and the situation gets more and more complicated as the film unfolds, and so the viewers continued attention is assured to be held.

The film's funniest moment come during the "seduction" scene between Tevis and Grady Sutton; it plays with the height difference between the two actors--with Tevis barely clearing 5' and Sutton being over 6' tall and Sutton playing his typical romantically challenged character. That one scene is worth a whole Star in my rating, by itself.