"Hounds of Love" is one of Kate Bush's all-time classics, whether we're talking about the song or the fantastic music video that goes along with it. Someone who "always thought it would look fantastic in black and white" went ahead and de-colorized it! The result is indeed fantastic! It looks a lot like many of the films that have been written about on this blog, including ones you watch in posts here.
Hounds of Love in Black and White (2015)
Starring: Kate Bush and Gow Hunter
Director: Kate Bush
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars
Starring: ZaSu Pitts, Thelma Todd, Blanche Payson, Germaine De Noel, and Wilfred Lucas
Director: James Horne
Rating: Five of Ten Stars
Thelma and ZaSu (Todd and Pitts) are suffering at home with colds, but their boss (Lucas) needs them at the office, because he can't close a business deal without their help. He arranges for them to go for a treatment at a health spa that is guaranteed to cure them and get them quickly back in the office.
"Red Noses" is another entry in the Thelma Todd-starring comedies that feels like a good idea that lost its way. Sending our heroines off to a health spa is a great concept and the end result here is mostly amusing, but it's another example of where not enough attention was paid to the story, nor even the gags. It's a shame, because the cast--led by Pitts who takes most of the abuse at the hands of the physical therapists at the spa--all do an excellent job; they're all playing the sorts of characters they're old hands at, and they're all in top form.
One of the biggest flaws with the script on the story front is that this is another film that just sort of stops without really ending. So much emphasis was put on how important it was that the Thelma and ZaSu be present at the business meeting that the film feels incomplete without some sort of callback to that. It seems that even the filmakers felt there was something missing at the end of the film, because, while our heroines make a perfectly acceptable getaway from the health spa (after their requests to leave have been repeatedly denied because the spa's policy is that you're either cured of your ailment or you're due a refund), it's followed up with Thelma and ZaSu walking in front of the worst worst back projection I've ever seen.
The treatment regiment the girls are subjected to at the spa also seems a bit strange, given that they are there with the express purpose of being cured of a cold. As funny as some of the physical gags are, shouldn't they be sitting in steam rooms or soaking in hot baths augmented with various herbs and spices? The resulting film would have required more thought on the part of the writers, but most of the better gags would still have fit into the film, including the Turkish massages the girls are subjected to.
And speaking of the gags, they run the gamut from under-developed, to just right, to dragging on, something which I, again, contribute to a lack of effort being put into the script. There's a bit of mud-throwing that doesn't really go anywhere (except serving for long-walk set-up for a cross-dressing scene and ensuing brawl.. which did add up to something funny). The bits involving Turkish massages are pretty flawless, while those involving exercise equipment drag on and on (except for one strange device that is basically Thelma Todd strapped to a bouncing chair).
In general, though, the film moves fast enough, and is funny enough, that the misfired and overly milked bits of physical comedy can be excused. In the end, this is an uneven but entertaining comedy and a nice way to waste 20 minutes.
There is one aspect to this film that I can't quite get a bead on, though, and I can't tell whether it's a subtext that's there or if it's because I live in a day and age where EVERYTHING is sexualized. Are Thelma and ZaSu more than just friends in this film? Are they a couple? There are two jokes that seem to say outright that they are (never mind the fact that they're sharing the same bed as the film opens). As the editor and publisher who green-lit turning the Science Sleuths gay, it's an odd position for me to be in....
The Mad Ghoul (1943)
Starring: George Zucco, David Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, Turhan Bey, and Robert Armstrong
Director: James Hogan
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars
College chemistry professor Alfred Morris (Zucco) re-discovers a formula for a gas that ancient Central Americans used turn people into pseudo-living zombies, as well as a means for reversing the transformation. He uses his assistant, Ted (Bruce), as an unwitting human test subject while trying to put the moves on Ted's opera-singing fiance (Ankers)... but when the antidote for the gas turns out to only be temporary, Morris's life and Ted's psuedo-undeath become a lot more complicated.
"The Mad Ghoul" is a horror film from Universal Pictures--the studio that bought the world "The Mummy", "Dracula", and "Frankenstein"--that sounds like a film from Monogram or PRC, with its mad scientist with an even madder scheme, a young couple being threatened by evil, and a crusading reporter who is going to stop the monster the police have been unable to catch.
What the writers and director does with those elements are a great change of, though: The crusading reporter ends up, the young couple's romance is revealed to have been over even before the film starts, and the mad doctor's mad scheme keeps getting more insane, first because he was cocky and had to cover up a failed experiment and then because he wanted to remove all rivals for the woman with whom he believes he shares a mutual attraction. (Some of my favorite parts of the film is when George Zucco and Evelyn Ankers' characters are talking past each other; Zucco thinks they are expressing their love for each other while Ankers thinks she's just unloading her sorrows to a sympathetic ear. These scenes feature some nice acting and even better writing, because they perfectly communicate the notion that Zucco's character later expresses, after he realizes he was mistaken: "Sometimes we see what we want to see.")
The cast of "The Mad Ghoul" all provide good performances. Zucco is in particularly fine form, playing the crazed heavy he specialized in but with a tiny bit of nuances thrown in. Robert Armstrong is also fun as the "I'm smarter than the cops" newsman who populates films of this type, and while I saw his brutal end coming before it actually happened, I was a little sad to see him go. Meanwhile, Ankers and Bey play the kinds of characters they portrayed in many other films, and they do it with their usual skill. Finally, David Bruce, in one of his few starring roles, is good as what initially comes across as the standard, fairly bland romantic lead, but becomes an increasingly interesting and nuanced character as the film unfolds.
The "?" Motorist (1906)
Starring: Anonymous
Director: Walter R. Booth
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars
Then there was that time Harry Potter's great-grandparents took their newly enchanted automobile for a spin in Muggles territory...
At the dawn of the British film industry, there was basically only one person who was making sci-fi/fantasy movies... and that was Walter R. Booth. He made dozens of wild short films that were full of fantastic concepts, special effects, and characters speeding around in cars and aircraft, or, in the case of this film, cars that become aircraft.
In "The '?' Motorist", a couple out for a drive have a very literal run-in with a police officer. While attempting to escape pursuit, they drive their magical car up the side of a building, onto the clouds over the city, and... well, to more distant locales. It's a special-effects laden romp that is still lots of fun and surprising in its weirdness even though its more than 110 years since it was first released. While some of the effects are weak by modern standards (and may even have disappointed audiences in the day), it barely matters because of how extremely whacky the action is. The only real flaw in the film is a bizarre editing choice where a crash seems to happen twice, or scenes take place in a poorly thought-out order, but that could just as easily be an artifact of bad restoration as incompetent choices on the part of Booth. It's hard to tell with something this old.
"The '?' Motorist" is only one of a small handful of Booth's films that are known to survive to present day. I enjoyed this one so much that I will have to seek out the other remaining pictures and post about them here. In the meantime, I want to share my joy of discovery with all you, via YouTube, by embedding the complete film below. I hope you find Booth's film as entertaining as I did--for me, it was three minutes of pure fun!
Haunted Spooks (1920)
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Ernest Morrison, Blue Washington, Marie Benson, and Wallace Howe
Directors: Alf Goulding and Hal Roach
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars
After she inherits the entirety of her uncle's estate Mildred Hillary (Davis), is swiftly married to a young man with nothing to lose (Lloyd), because the will states she must live in the main house with her husband for a year or everything goes to her other uncle (Howe). Meanwhile, said other uncle comes up with a scheme to scare the newlyweds off the property by making them think the house is haunted.
I sat down to watch "Haunted Spooks" with some trepidation--given its age and its title, I feared I may be in for a movie that hadn't aged well. Turns out, my fears were unfounded. While the film does feature "superstitious negroes", they are no more or less rediculous than the white characters who run around the old house while panicking after being confronted by the fake ghosts. Further, the black butler (played by Blue Washington) gets to redeem himself by throwing the greedy hoaxers by throwing them out of the house as the movie is coming to an end (come on, that's not a spoiler... does anyone watching this film a century later really think there was ever any chance the bad guys would be successful?) while our skeptic hero, Harold Lloyd, has one last moment of panic when it appears the house really might be haunted after all.
As for the rest of the movie, everything flows smoothly, and while the team here comes dangerously close to making the same mistakes that sank "Captain Kidd's Kids" (1919). Like "Captain Kidd's Kids", this film takes a long time getting to the spooks we're promised in the title and on the poster; the film is more than half over before Harold and his new bride arrive at the supposedly haunted house. However, unlike "Captain Kidd's Kids", the long journey to the pay-off is one that we share with likable and rediculous characters, so it's a fun ride all the way. (In the other film, there was little to nothing to like about the lead characters.)
The ending to this film is also one of the most satisfying of any of the ones to a Harold Lloyd film I've seen so far. Often, even when it's a generally happy ending for most of the characters in the film, they've involved Harold running for the hills to escape disaster, or him going off to wallow in self-pitiying misery. Here, we get a happy ending all around (except for those dastardly relatives who were trying to steal Mildred's inheritence), and the writers even get in one final joke that I found to be among the funniest in the whole picture.
There's an excellent version of "Haunted Spooks" that can be watched on YouTube. There are a few missing frames here and there, but the image is constently clear and the music isn't half-bad. I've embedded it below, so you can take a few minutes out of your day to enjoy yourself right now! (I should note that fans of romances and Scooby-Doo cartoons will probably like this alot: The first half of the film is a highly amusing send-up of common gothic romance tropes while the second half could well be a Scooby-Doo plotline.)
Maid in Hollywood (1934)
Starring: Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly, Eddie Foy Jr., Alphonse Martell, Billy Gilbert, and Constance Bergen
Director: Guy Meins
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars
After failing to make it as actress, Thelma (Todd) is on the verge of leaving Hollywood forever when her friend Patsy (Kelly) manages to manipulate circumstances so her friend has one more screen-test... and one final shot at stardom.
I have observed several times that Thelma Todd managed to somehow project poise and grace even when in the most ridiculous and embarrassing circumstances. That is not the case in "Maid in Hollywood." Here, she looks every bit as frazzled as someone whose dream is dying, and becomes every bit as disheveled as you would assume someone would become in the situations she ends up in during the picture. And that is a nice change, because it adds a slightly different flavor to Todd's character in this film.
What's also nice is that one can feel a warmth in the friendship between Todd's and Kelly's characters that's missing in some of their films. Their friendship seems deep enough that it's believable that Kelly goes to the lengths she does to help Todd be successful in achieving her dream. I wonder if that might not be a sign that perhaps this script was originally written for Todd and her previous co-star in this series, ZaSu Pitts? The relationship between those two characters never had the nasty edge that sometimes creeps into the Todd/Kelly pictures, so that could explain the different tone here. (And this is despite Kelly being as loud and brash and as stupidly aggressive as she is in many of these pictures; in other films, this is one of the reasons I felt it hard to believe Todd and Kelly's characters were friends, but here, it works.)
Overall, the script for "Maid in Hollywood" is among the better ones in the Todd headlined comedies, in that it presents a full story with a beginning, middle, end, and even a denouement. This is particularly noteworthy to me, because it feels like a sequel to "One Track Minds" (1933) where Todd's character was traveling to Hollywood with hopes of becoming a movie star, and "One Track Minds" had one of the worst scripts in the series.
The film is made even better by the fact that it sports a talented cast that elevate the good material they are working with excellent performances. The reason I didn't give it a Nine of Ten rating is because much of the physical comedy that Patsy Kelly engages in feels a bit rough and under-rehearsed--it's clunky and repetitive, especially her repeated run-ins with the sound equipment on the film set.
"Maid in Hollywood" is an excellent little comedy, and it is one of several that make the three-disc collection of all of the films Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly made together worth your while.
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