The zany plot follows nitwit Gracie Allen trying to help master sleuth Philo Vance solve a murder.
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A DUMBELLE…who knew too much about MURDER!
Super-sleuth Philo Vance faces the zaniest case of his career when Gracie Allen “helps” him try to solve the murder of an escaped convict. As she attempts to clear the name of a friend accused of the killing, her wacky, scatterbrained ways constantly impede the investigation.Read More »
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Short hype film for the 1936 Olympics. Through dialogue-free montage we first travel around Germany, taking in the sights and getting plenty of Heimat vibes. Tradition and the contemporary go side-by-side: the sights and possibilities of the budding Reichsautobahn are evoked — Fanget an!, to quote the Führer.Read More »
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The captain of a battleship of a small Balkan country is fed up with following strange orders from the country’s queen, who wants to make a cruise to the Med inspite of the fact that the country is broke and the crew didn’t get its salary. So he decides to disobey orders and commands his ship to Monte Carlo, but the queen decides to go there too. He loses his money there at the casino, but the queen falls in love with him. Written by Stephan Eichenberg {eichenbe}Read More »
A very nervous man named Cartwright comes into Perry’s office to have the neighbor arrested for his howling dog. He states that the howling is a sign that there is a death in the neighborhood. He also wants a will written giving his estate to the lady living at the neighbors house. It is all very mysterious and by the next day, his will is changed and Cartwright is missing, as is the lady of the house next door. Perry has a will and a retainer and must find out whether he has a client or a beneficiary.Read More »
This tragicomedy from 1939, directed by Martin Frič, is among the most popular Czech films of all time. The reason behind this is the intriguing protagonist – Alois Novák, the seemingly banal married office clerk. Novák works in a travel agency, but once a month he spends an evening in the luxurious Orient Bar playing the seducer Kristian, always to disappear for ever at the key moment when his enticed female prey is about to fall for his charms. Alois/Kristian has become an integral part of Czech popculture and one iconic depiction of the country’s national character. Read More »
Based on a novel by Phil (State Fair) Stong, The Stranger’s Return is one of the most accomplished projects of director King Vidor, and one of the few MGM films of its period to display anything like a “personal touch.” Miriam Hopkins stars as a bored Manhattanite who visits her family farm in Iowa. Her grandfather Lionel Barrymore, an irascible Civil War vet, rules over the farm with the help of a drunken but reliable handyman (Stu Erwin). Barrymore’s stepdaughter Beulah Bondi and her lazy husband Grant Mitchell are hostile towards Hopkins, a state of affairs not helped when Miriam strikes up a friendship with the farmer husband (Franchot Tone) of a popular local girl (Irene Hervey).Read More »
Robert Shaw slaughters his wife’s lover and runs away with his secretary Jacqueline. Helped by a French trapper who takes them for film-makers, they hide in Northern Canada.Read More »
“Then I won’t be a girl. And I won’t be weak and I won’t be silly. I’ll be a boy and rough and hard. I won’t care what I do. Don’t worry! I’m ready for anything.”
– Sylvia (Katharine Hepburn)
Sylvia Scarlett is a 1935 romantic comedy film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, based on The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, a novel by Compton MacKenzie. Directed by George Cukor, it was notorious as one of the most famous unsuccessful movies of the 1930s. Hepburn plays the title role of Sylvia Scarlett, a female con artist masquerading as a boy to escape the police. The success of the subterfuge is in large part due to the transformation of Hepburn by RKO make-up artist Mel Berns.Read More »
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Shanghai Drama was originally released in France in 1938 under the title Le Drame de Shanghai. Director G. W. Pabst, best known for the erotic classics Diary of a Lost Girl and Pandora’s Box, seems artistically subdued in this standard tale of pre-WW2 intrigue. The villains are the Japanese, who inveigle a group of exiled White Russians to aid in the subjugation of China. Trapped in the web of deceit is nightclub chanteuse Kay (Christine Mardayne), whose efforts to break away from a sinister Black Dragon-like society are doomed to failure. The film’s only ray of hope is manifested in the character of Kay’s daughter Vera (Suzanne Dempers), who is afforded the opportunity to start life anew with journalist Franchon (Raymond Rouleau). allmovie.comRead More »