MURDER OVER NEW YORK (1940)

Charlie Chan, on a plane heading to New York City for a police convention, chats with Scotland Yard inspector Drake who is after a saboteur named Narvo. He has tracked Narvo's wife to New York and is looking for help from her. Also showing up in the Big Apple is Chan's pesky son Jimmy. At a party for Drake given at the apartment of aircraft executive George Kirby, Drake winds up dead, poisoned by a tetrogene gas pellet—surprisingly, it's Jimmy who identifies the newly developed gas—and his briefcase of secret documents goes missing. Following the conventions of the mystery genre, the guests at the party all become suspects. There is Fenton, an old friend of Drake's who treats the murder as a personal inconvenience; Jeffrey, a business associate of Kirby's; Ralph Percy, an airplane designer; actress June Preston; Boggs, the somewhat shady butler; David Elliott, a chemist who was working with tetrogene and may have been the last person to see Drake alive; and, of course, Kirby. Eventually Narvo's wife shows up, using the name Pat Shaw; she has left Narvo (and is now involved with Elliott) but worries that she is being followed by Narvo and his Hindu associate Ramullah. Police inspector Vance has the bright idea of bringing in a dragnet of all Hindu men in the city, leading to a comic scene in which one Hindu man is revealed to be a non-Hindu con man. In the somewhat improbable climax, Chan and Vance gather all the suspects onto a plane on which a capsule of tetrogene has been hidden the night before. Will there be a mass murder over New York?

Some years ago, during my first viewing of the Chan films on the Fox Movie Channel, this was one of my favorites due to the airplane climax. Now, however, that scene isn't quite enough to boost the film much above a B-minus. The plot, as is often the case, gets muddled and there are almost too many characters. But there is an unusually strong supporting cast. A few of my favorite character actors are present: Ricardo Cortez, who played both good guys and villains, is Kirby; the British actor Melville Cooper is appropriately obnoxious as Fenton; the British John Sutton is Jeffrey; busy B-movie lead Kane Richmond is Percy; Robert Lowery, who played Batman in a 1949 serial, is the chemist Elliott. As is sometimes the case in Chan movies, the females (Marjorie Weaver and Joan Valerie) are weaker, partly because their roles seem underwritten. Sidney Toler (Chan) and Victor Sen Yung (Jimmy) are fine, though Jimmy is more irritating here than usual. The likable Frank Coghlan Jr. (Billy Batson in the original Captain Marvel serial) has a small but noticeable role. Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges is the fake Hindu man. Donald MacBride, who played cops in dozens of classic-era films, is Vance. The first fifteen minutes, as the case is being set up, are good, as are the last fifteen; it's in the middle that things bog down a bit. Pictured are Cortez, Richmond and Toler. [DVD]

THE SECRET OF THE LOCH (1934)

In a small Scottish village, Joe, perhaps slightly inebriated, runs into a tavern one misty night claiming to have seen the legendary Loch Ness Monster, a giant sea serpent creature that supposedly lives in the Scottish lake. There has been a rash of sightings lately and people who have gone underwater looking for it have not returned. In London at a conference of morphologists, Professor Heggie claims the beast is real and that it's a relative of a dinosaur. His fellow scientists laugh him off the stage, but Jimmy, a reporter, smells a good story and follows Heggie back to his village. Lots of other reporters have had the same idea, but Jimmy gets a leg up by breaking into Heggie's house and flirting with his granddaughter Angela. He gets on the good side of Angus, Heggie's beefy assistant, by wearing a tartan tie of the MacNockie clan (a tie which he filched from a girl at his newspaper) of which Angus happens to be a member. With nothing concrete to go on, Jimmy gets fired by his boss and told that only an interview with the monster will save him. Heggie hires a diver to look for the serpent one night, but he runs into some trouble and his air hose comes to the surface without him. Heggie is charged with negligence in the diver's death and Jimmy, who now is in love with Angela, decides to take a dive himself and settle the matter. 

The Loch Ness Monster has been a pop culture phenomenon since 1934 when a British newspaper published a photograph of the monster, a blurry shot of what looks like a toy dinosaur coming out of the water. This film, which came out at the end of 1934, appears to be a quickie attempt to exploit that photo's popularity. Though a handful of sightings were reported before the 1930s, it wasn't until the photo and a separate account of a sighting became news, perhaps because of the building of a new road which gave more access to the loch, that Nessie became a legend. This is mostly a comedy, despite the death of the diver, with humor provided by the village locals and the morphologists. In the last few minutes, Jimmy does indeed see the monster (an iguana photographically enlarged and matted into an underwater shot) and later a group of men see it rise up out of the loch, in a shot that looks very much like the newspaper photo. Seymour Hicks, a distinguished stage actor known for playing Scrooge in an early sound version of A Christmas Carol, is Heggie, and he doesn't seem to be too happy in the role. Frederick Peisley, however, throws himself into the comic romantic lead as Jimmy (pictured), and Gibson Gowland (the star of GREED) is fine in the semi-comic role of Angus. Nancy O'Neil has the underwritten part of Angela. In the 70-minute movie, we don't even get near the loch until the 50-minute mark, so don't watch this expecting a serious sci-fi, adventure, or horror film, though the murky atmosphere of most of the scenes is effective—with some of the murkiness due to the age of the unrestored print. As a novelty, and as the first film about the monster, it's kind of fun. As far as other movies on the subject, there haven't been many, with the most well-known one being a Scooby-Doo cartoon movie made for video in 2004. [YouTube]

SCOTLAND YARD HUNTS DR. MABUSE (1963)

aka DR. MABUSE VS. SCOTLAND YARD

The fifth of the Dr. Mabuse German reboots from the 1960s begins with Mabuse dead, as he was at the end of the fourth film, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE. The supernatural has usually been an element of the Mabuse films, often obliquely or ambiguously, but here we see the spirit of the crime lord Mabuse possess Prof. Pohland, an asylum director, and direct him to spread “panic and chaos.” After that, however, it’s mostly a straightforward crime melodrama. In fact, given that the plot is based on a story by Edgar Wallace’s son Bryan, it's very close in look and feel to the German krimi movies of the era, as the earlier THOUSAND EYES and RETURN were, with a sci-fi element. It begins in Hamburg. Inspector Vulpius is upset that Mabuse's infamous "testament," the scribbled documents that he wrote in the throes of madness and which contained plans for future criminal plans, has been destroyed. A train derailment frees a prisoner, Cockstone, whom Pohland uses to help refine a new and dastardly invention by Prof. Lawrence: something that looks like a camera but is actually a mind control device. When aimed at someone's head, that person will follow whatever instructions they are given (verbal orders transmitted to the person somehow), though the control fades when the subject sleeps. Cockstone kills Lawrence and Pohland moves his operations to England, where he sends his henchmen out with the devices, triggering a major crime wave of robbery and murder and suicide. Vulpius follows and teams up with Scotland Yard man Bill Tern to stop Pohland's reign of terror. Though this feels very little like a Mabuse movie, it’s fun as a crime movie, well paced and exciting. 

Few cast members from the earlier Mabuse movies are present here. Peter van Eyck is a bit lightweight and even a bit too old for part of Tern, without the energy of Lex Barker, the lead in the last two films. Werner Peters, who played minor roles in previous films, is fine as Vulpius, though I do miss Gert Forbe from the previous movie. One of the oddest characters in a Mabuse movie (or, for that matter, in a krimi) is Tern's elderly mother, played by Agnes Windeck, who gives herself nightmares from reading crime novels but is very helpful to her son with her off-the-wall insights. Even odder is Klaus Kinski, a regular in the Edgar Wallace krimi films, playing Joe, a fellow Scotland Yard detective. His stock-in-trade is playing tense neurotics, and here, though he's a good guy (except briefly when he is put under mind control), he still looks like he might just snap any minute. Walter Rilla reprises his role from TESTAMENT as Pohland, the Mabuse stand-in, and is very good. Sabine Bethmann plays a half-hearted romantic interest for Tern. The best scene is one in which a hangman, about to execute a prisoner, is forced through mind control to hang himself. Even though the reboot movies move further and further from the mood of the Fritz Lang Mabuse movies, they are still worth seeing. I’ve got one more to go. Pictured are van Eyck and Kinski. [Blu-ray]

EVERYBODY'S DOING IT (1938)

Mr. Byers, the head of a big advertising agency, sends Waldo, a young underling, out to find Bruce Keene (Preston Foster), an unreliable ad executive who spends too much time in bars and not enough in his office. When he's found, he gets fired, much to the dismay of his girlfriend Penny (Sally Eilers), who is a secretary at the same agency. That night, Bruce draws a kind of combination caricature/rebus on a wall at a restaurant that impresses the owner, and Penny, and eventually Mr. Byers who rehires Bruce to do a campaign for a new cereal called Tantalizing Tasties. One a week, he'll draw a picture puzzle to be published as a newspaper ad, and contests will be held to solve the puzzle with a big cash prize each week. But to enter, contestants must include a boxtop from the new cereal. When the promotion pays off, the cereal is a hit, but Bruce starts hitting the taverns pretty hard. Penny hires small-time crook Softy Blane to kidnap Bruce and take him to a health farm to dry out, but Devers, Blane's boss, decides that cornering the market on puzzle answers would make for some easy money, so he breaks Bruce out of the farm and kidnaps him for real, keeping him making the puzzles. Eventually Penny figures out, from clues in the pictures, what's happened to Bruce and goes to the police. A fairly slapstick finale of guns and fists leads to Devers' capture, and to Bruce proposing to Penny. This is a mild little romantic comedy with crime overtones that never gets too terribly serious. Apparently, it's built around an actual fad of the time for picture puzzles—you might think that would date the movie badly, but it actually gives it a nice novelty appeal. Foster and Eilers play off each other well, but it's the supporting cast that makes this movie fun: Cecil Kellaway, Guinn Williams, Richard Lane, Arthur Lake and Jack Carson. There’s a song with a cute title: “Put Your Heart in Your Feet and Dance,” and there's a fun line from Williams to a flirting Lorraine Krueger: “You’d love anything that had biceps.” Pictured are Foster and Lane. [TCM]

JUNGLE QUEEN (1945 serial)

In 1939, just before the outbreak of WWII, Germans are worried about access to Europe through Africa and a number of Nazi spies are sent to Tambosa in British Middle Africa. Their mission is to take control of the Tongghili, a group of tribes coexisting under their ruling judge Tonga. When he is killed, the tribal elder Godac, by virtue of his possession of the powerful Sword of Tongu, is set to name a successor. The Nazis get the cooperation of Maati, who will serve as their puppet ruler, but Kyba is also in the running. Lord Bell, head of British espionage and known by most only as Mr. X, has agents in Tambosa trying to figure out who the Nazi leaders are and counteract their efforts among the locals. Unfortunately, a Nazi spy is listening in to all conversations in Mr. X's office and he reports to Dr. Elise Bork, outwardly the respected head of an experimental farm but actually a spymaster, and her associate Lang who maintains direct contact with Maati. Meanwhile, Pam Courtney comes to Tambosa looking for her father, an explorer who has vanished; she has been tasked by Mr. X to get her father to help in their efforts to find the Nazis. Two unofficial American agents, adventurer Bob Elliot and his auto mechanic buddy Chuck Kelly, meet Pam on a plane and the three pool their efforts to find and stop the Nazi spies. A wild card in all this is Lothel, the mystery queen of the jungle, who can walk through fire unharmed (as pictured at left), can appear and disappear at will, is invulnerable to bullets, and tries to influence the Tongghili to choose Kyba as the new leader. When that seems to fail, she works with the Allies to find and defeat the Nazis.

This is a 13-chapter serial and most of the above summary is made clear in the first two chapters, which leaves eleven more chapters to fill. On the plus side, this has the look of a relatively high-budget B-film with good sets and some twisty plot points. For the most part, it doesn't keep repeating story bits like many serials do. On the other hand, the writing is not great. Far too much activity is talked about rather than shown, with people constantly announcing who they are, where they are, what they've just done and what they're planning on doing. Each chapter has a cliffhanger but the next chapter begins with exposition, usually expressed in dialogue, often in England or Berlin, before we see how the cliffhanger works itself out. There are plenty of plot holes. For example, we never understand the importance of the Sword of Tongu aside from its being a symbol of power. I kept wondering why the bad guys didn't just construct a fake one, and in fact, long about chapter 12, someone does. Lothel, the title character, is quite strange. In terms of being a great white protector of the Tongghili, she's sort of a Tarzan figure. She seems to live in the back of a cave chamber which is filled with fire and used as a place of justice—accused criminals are sent to the fire chamber and told that the innocent will survive. No one ever does except Lothel; in every chapter, we see a clip of her, dressed in diaphanous robes, leaping through the fire and emerging in the throne room to make important proclamations. Her origin is never even touched on. There are a number of characters, some (like the sinister bar owner Tambosa Tim) only present for a short time. Some of the Nazi henchmen, such as Drake and Weber, are important briefly before they are sacrificed.

The acting is fairly weak. Our hero, Edward Norris (Bob), is OK in the crunch but not quite as heroic looking or acting as he could be, definitely not up to the standards of Kane Richmond or Buster Crabbe. Eddie Quillan (Chuck) is mostly comic relief with an occasionally heroic scene. Lois Collier (Pam) fades into the background. Ruth Roman (known later for Strangers on a Train and lots of TV including Knots Landing) has a nice otherworldly look and demeanor as Lothel, but when it comes down to it, doesn't have much to do except flit about in her fireproof nightgown. Douglass Dumbrille (Lang), Clarence Muse (Kyba), and Napoleon Simpson (Maati) are fine, and the best performance comes from German actress Tala Birell as Bork. Though she gets stuck in her own repetitive bits, she's convincing as the chief villain who also has to appear pleasant and innocent. It's a rarity to have a female as the main Nazi and she's up to the task. I like the fact that some of the Black characters, mostly Maati and Godac, have actual agency and aren't just mindless followers or henchmen. I liked this a little less than I wanted to, but the Blu-ray print has been nicely restored, even if some of the early chapters are a little faded looking in terms of clarity. As a whole, it's awfully talky though rarely boring, and probably not one for a viewer new to classic era serials. Pictured above right are Norris and Quillan. [Blu-ray]

THE NIGHT OF THE SCORPION (1972)

Oliver Bromfield feels guilty over the death of his wife Helen some months ago. She fell through a second-floor railing in the family mansion in what was found to be an accidental death, but Oliver, an alcoholic, fears that he caused the death while in a drunken haze. Sara, Oliver's widowed stepmother, has always had a thing for Oliver and tries to talk him into living with her, but he moves out anyway. He soon marries Ruth and brings her to live in the mansion. The jealous Sara begins spying on Oliver and Ruth's lovemaking by peering through a hole in a clock against the wall. Also in the house: Jenny, Oliver's fragile sister who was engaged in an affair with Helen, and Clara, a maid who may know more than she tells. The suspicious atmosphere in the house sends Ruth to talk to the family doctor who also has mild concerns about Helen's death—he testified that she was prone to dizzy spells but that was a lie because he was protecting Oliver, or perhaps Sara, if one of them was responsible for Helen's fall. Soon Ruth has reason to believe that her life may be in danger when some milk she was going to drink is lapped at the house cat and the cat dies. But, whoa, later Ruth sees the cat alive—is she starting to snap just like Oliver might have snapped? Ruth's uncle Edward visits, but it turns out he is actually a detective she has hired to investigate the family. This has all been very gothic soap opera in tone, but in the home stretch, a giallo trope (a black-gloved killer slashing throats) crops up. Still, the gothic soap opera strain of the story wins out and the film ends predictably. Critics who expected this Italian/Spanish co-production to be a sexy gory giallo don't like this film, but since I approached it as gothic, I was less disappointed. It's no great shakes on any level (too talky and slowly paced, with people not really doing anything for long stretches, though the visuals are occasionally interesting) but I kept watching. Jose Antonio Amor (pictured) has a nicely dissolute look as Oliver, keeping us on our toes about his guilt; the women—Nuria Torray (Sara), Daniela Giordano (Ruth), and Teresa Gimpera (Jenny)---all seem a bit interchangeable. The opening funeral scene felt like it came right out of a Hammer movie. Ultimately, the whole thing seemed to me like a Dark Shadows story arc and on that level, I enjoyed it. [YouTube]

CHARLIE CHAN’S MURDER CRUISE (1940)

Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard visits Charlie Chan in his Honolulu office. Duff is traveling incognito on the trail of a strangler who is apparently one of ten folks on a four-month world cruise run by a man named Suderman (Lionel Atwill). The last leg of the trip will leave soon for San Francisco and Chan agrees to help, but when Chan leaves his office briefly, Duff is strangled to death by an intruder and Chan is determined to finish Duff's case. He visits the hotel the cruise group is staying at where a Mr. Kenyon is found dead, a small bag of thirty coins found in his hand. Chan makes a connection to Judas' thirty pieces of silver from the Bible and assumes a betrayal motive for the murders. Other cruise members include Kenyon's nephew (Robert Lowery), a somewhat acerbic socialite (Cora Witherspoon), her secretary (Marjorie Weaver) who is flirting with Lowery, an archeologist (Leo G. Carroll), a playboy, and an older couple who believe in signs from the unseen world. Of course, it wouldn't be a Charlie Chan movie without one of his sons tagging along—here it’s #2 son Jimmy who stows away on the ship once it takes off. We see a heavily bearded man skulking around the ship, obviously someone in disguise, who eventually strangles another passenger before Chan ropes all the remaining cruise members together in San Francisco to unmask the strangler. This is one of the better Sidney Toler Chan films, partly because it has a fast pace and fairly straightforward plotting (based on one of the original Chan novels, Charlie Chan Carries On, which was adapted to film in 1931 but is now considered lost). Like most of the Chan movies from Fox, the supporting cast is strong, especially Lowery, Witherspoon, Atwill, and Carroll. Charles Middleton, the villain Ming in the Flash Gordon serials, is the meek husband to the occult inclined wife. Jimmy (Victor Sen Ying) gets an amusing slapstick moment as he goes slipping and sliding through a hallway and collides with a steward carrying a full tray of food. The opening scene is a fun bit in Chan's office as Jimmy and his younger brother Willie comb through Pop's mail to find Willie's disappointing report card, which it turns out Chan has already seen. Not quite top rank Chan, lacking an interesting atmosphere, but enjoyable. Pictured are Atwill, Yung and Toler. [DVD]

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1962)

I've been reviewing the 1960s Dr. Mabuse films here recently. You should go to Wikipedia or IMDb for the full background of the character, but I will note that this is the fourth in the rebooted German series from CCC Studios from the 1960s, and a remake of Fritz Lang's 1933 film of the same title. At the end of the previous film, the criminal mastermind Mabuse has gone insane and been committed to an asylum, filling his hours by constantly scribbling indecipherable notes and sketches. This film begins with a couple of daring and clever robberies: gold is stolen from an armored car, a diamond exchange is robbed, and paper used for printing money is taken from a train (this for a smaller gang of blind men who work as counterfeiters). Inspector Lohmann thinks that the crimes betray the touch of Mabuse, but asylum director Pohland takes Lohmann to see Mabuse, safely locked away and single-mindedly scribbling in his cell. Jonny, a boxer, is recruited to join the criminal gang whose orders are given to them in a secret passage room by a shadowy figure, though Jonny hides his new job from his girlfriend Nelly (who I really only mention because she is played by future star Senta Berger). Halfway through, we discover that Mabuse has Pohland under his hypnotic power, and it's Pohland who passes his criminal plans along to the gang. The gang members try not to kill or harm the innocents who get involved in their crimes, but one gang member who turns out to be spying for the cops is, in the movie's best scene, killed by a backward-shooting gun. The last fifteen minutes are a wild and wooly climax involving the electrical torture of Lohmann and by the end, both Mabuse and Pohland are dead, though based on the evidence of the previous films, they're probably not.

This is my favorite of the 60s Mabuse movies so far. Lang fans may not love it as it generally eschews the mystical feel and expressionist look of the 1933 original, though the possibility of telepathic communication is presented, but it's fast moving, coherent, and presents the gang members as competent crooks rather than evil geniuses. With the Mabuse mystique as a fairly minor element—unlike in some of the other movies, Mabuse doesn't come across here as a threat to humanity—it may be best viewed as a traditional crime melodrama, lacking (for better or worse) the almost spy-movie feel of the previous Mabuse entries as there is no handsome studly agent here, just the somewhat schlubby Lohmann, played superbly by Gert Frobe in his third appearance in the series. Wolfgang Preiss, again, plays Mabuse though with limited screen time, and Walter Rilla is very effective as Pohland. At one point, he delivers the great line, "We are not a humanitarian organization—dead bodies are part of our business." Some genuinely amusing comic relief is provided by Harald Juhnke as Lohmann's assistant who keeps positing crime solutions based on movies and novels. Also with Helmut Schmid as Jonny and Charles Regnier as Mortimer, the nominal gang leader. Though the 1933 original is a better movie (and a darker one), this is exciting and fairly fun. Released in the United States in 1965 as The Terror of Dr. Mabuse. Pictured are Frobe and Juhnke. [Blu-ray]

THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH (1964)

aka DR. SYN, ALIAS THE SCARECROW (1963)

In 18th century England, along the coast of Dover, near the town of Dymchurch on Romney Marsh, a band of smugglers have managed to operate for some time, illegally seizing shipments of liquor and gold from ships in the middle of the night, and hauling the goods back to an oast house, a barn where hops are dried. The leader of the smugglers is a masked figure called the Scarecrow, who dresses as a creepy looking scarecrow with a burlap bag mask (pictured at right). He is assisted by the similarly masked Hellspite (wearing a demon face) and the Curlew (a fluffy bird face). We learn that the Scarecrow is actually Dr. Syn, the local vicar, who believes that the villagers are being "taxed out of existence and robbed of their independence" by the exorbitant taxes of King George. In Robin Hood fashion, the money from the smuggled goods is given to the villagers to pay their taxes. When General Pugh arrives in town, telling Squire Banks that he's not doing enough to try and stop the smugglers, Syn's operation is threatened, as is the livelihood of the villagers. Pugh brings in a press gang crew in an attempt to force able-bodied men to serve in the Navy, an act which would certainly stop the smuggling, but also empty the village of working men, and Syn decides he must fight back. Even the town's leader, Squire Banks, is sympathetic as his son was kidnapped years ago by such a gang. Two arrivals in town complicate things. One is Banks' son who has escaped the Navy, and the other is an American named Bates, wanted on charges of sedition for preaching freedom for the colonies. Both could help the villagers but both are being hunted down.

This was produced by Walt Disney as a three-part miniseries for his Wonderful World of Color TV show. The above summary basically covers the first hour, which ends with the Scarecrow's men victorious. In the second episode, Pugh searches out men who had been in arrears with their taxes but who suddenly had a windfall and managed to pay up, the assumption being that these men were the recipients of smuggling money. A man named Ransley becomes the smuggler's weak link, offering to rat out the others for immunity. When some men are caught and put on trial for smuggling brandy, Syn arranges for the barrels to be emptied and filled with water which results in an embarrassing loss for Pugh. Banks' son arrives in episode three; when he and Bates are captured and taken to Dover to be tortured, Syn plots to free them by dressing his men as a Navy press gang and taking the men out of the prison, more or less under the nose of General Pugh himself.

I cover the origin of the Dr. Syn character in my review of the 1937 DR. SYN, but this adaptation is based more directly on a 1960 rewritten and simplified version of the original 1915 novel. This film dispenses with an entire subplot involving Syn actually being a reformed pirate, so there are only two identities to keep up with. Losing the pirate background doesn't hurt, as there is still plenty of narrative. Patrick McGoohan (TV's The Prisoner) uses his slyboots look to great effect here as Syn, looking like he's always one step ahead of everyone around him, even if he's not. The memorable opening sequence of each episode shows the Scarecrow riding and cackling at night, but the series itself is actually a bit short on such scenes. Still, Syn is a compelling lead character, and the Scarecrow is a bit unsettling, with his costume and his loud, gruff voice (very different from Syn's soft but commanding voice). George Cole (Mipps, the town sexton who is also Hellspite) and 16-year-old Sean Scully (the squire's son, also the Curlew) are fine in support, and the Curlew’s mask is almost as weird looking as the Scarecrow’s. Geoffrey Keen (Pugh) is a solid villain; Michael Hordern is the squire; David Buck is the squire’s handsome son. I haven't even mentioned the romantic subplot, in which one of Pugh's men courts the squire's daughter, to the disapproval of the squire, but winds up providing aid to Syn and his men and gets the girl in the end. Without ads and Disney's episode intros, the TV version of this film (under the Romney Marsh title) runs a bit over two hours, but a few months before it aired in America, it was released as a 100 minute feature film in Great Britain (and later in the States) with the Dr. Syn title, cutting most of the plot of the first episode. I watched both versions and, while the feature film is better paced, I enjoyed the longer version more. Pictured at left are Tony Britton and David Buck. [DVD]

DOCTOR SYN (1937)

In 1780, we see a contingent of pirates drag a violent beefy mute man off a boat onto an island where they tie him to a post and put up a sign that says, "Here rot the bones of a traitor mulatto—so perish all who would betray Capt. Clegg." In 1800, we are in the village of Dymchurch on the southern coast of England near Romney Marsh. In the graveyard we see a stone for Clegg who was caught and hanged years ago. As clergyman Christopher Syn preaches in the church, he is given a note that a band of government revenue agents, led by Capt. Collyer, has landed on the coast and plans on staying in town for a while, their mission to catch members of a criminal ring who have been smuggling goods (mostly liquor) for years and making money so the citizens can pay the onerous taxes levied by the king. Syn insists that there are no smugglers, but we find out that there are, and that Syn is the secret head of the ring, hiding behind the identity of the unseen figure The Scarecrow who assigns men to meet ships on the shore at midnight and move their smuggled goods to a barn on the outskirts of town. Only Syn's assistant Mipps, the sexton and undertaker, knows his secret. But Syn has another secret we learn later: he is the dread Captain Clegg, who escaped his hanging and swore off pirating years ago to become the village clergyman. More plotlines arise that will tie together. First, we see that the lovely young orphan Imogene has eyes for the handsome young Denis Cobtree, son of the local squire, though Rash, the schoolteacher, has long been interested in her. Later, we learn that Imogene is the daughter of Clegg, and Syn has been keeping an eye on her. Finally, the mulatto, who survived his ordeal, is a member of the revenue gang and therefore a threat to Syn if he recognizes him as Clegg. A couple of other secrets will surface, and when the town doctor tells the agents that he has seen mysterious "phantoms on horseback" on the marsh at night, Collyer is sure he's on the trail of the smugglers.

Some people think that Dr. Syn was a real person who became a folk hero but actually, he was an invention of British novelist Russell Thorndike, though his stories were based on actual smuggling incidents that occurred near Romney Marsh. I've never read the books, but the character as presented here is a fascinating one, though we're rushed through the character's pirate background only as exposition. This allows the filmmakers to keep Syn likable as a Robin Hood type. Syn is played by the great British actor George Arliss (pictured above). This was his last movie and he was almost 70 when it was filmed; he has plenty of energy and comes off as at least a decade younger, but I doubt he would have been credible as a swashbuckling pirate, though he acquits himself well in a brief fisticuffs scene near the end, perhaps with the help of a stuntman. Arliss, who has a distinct long and unhandsome face, didn't make his first sound film until 1929 when he was past 60 and is largely forgotten today, though he won a Best Actor Oscar in 1930. I like him quite a bit and have reviewed many of his movies on my blog. Arliss never gave a bad performance, and though he's exactly not a scenery chewer, Arliss does tend to command most of the attention in his movies, leaving supporting players a bit at sea. Here, Margaret Lockwood is fine as Imogene; John Loder is handsome though underused as Cobtree; Meinhart Maur has little screen time as the mulatto but he makes the most of it as a physical presence, a bit like Tor Johnson would in the late 1950s. Graham Moffatt makes an impression as the simple-minded young Jerry Jerk—he reminds me of the teenage department store worker Alfred in Miracle on 34th Street. Others are adequate but don't get to shine. At 80 minutes, this starts to drag a bit in the middle but ends excitingly. Many baby boomers, like me, know Dr. Syn from a Walt Disney mini-series from 1964 that has a cult following now; I’ll be reviewing that tomorrow. [DVD]