Last night we watched a very entertaining "old dark house" mystery, featuring the early comedienne with the unusual name, Zasu Pitts. We've never seen her before, she began in Silent film and starred in Von Stroheim's legendary "Greed", and her bio on IMDB is extensive, but apparently, despite not being a top name star, she was something of a legend in Hollywood, and specialised in playing "Nervous Nellies," worrywarts one step away from getting the vapors. In "The Crooked Circle"(1932), she plays "Nora Rafferty", the housekeeper at the creepy old Harmon manor. As the movie opens, a Skull and Bones-type secret society is meeting in a darkened chamber amidst Satanic imagery. Wearing black hoods, they swear an oath to their order, The Crooked Circle, and then one member, unseen to us but identified as the only female, is given a scroll that names her as the assassin for the group's next victim, one "Colonel Walters" (Burton Churchill), a wealthy man who heads a group of amateur detectives called The Sphinx Club. The Circle marks him for death because a prior investigation by The Sphinx Club has landed one of their members in prison. In addition to being Satanists,The Crooked Circle are counterfeiters, of every thing from money to works of art.
At the Sphinx clubhouse, Col. Walters is handed a symbolic, Tarot-like card that lets him know in advance he'll be killed by The Circle. He laughs it off, and the Sphinxes retreat to the Harmon Manor, an old mansion with a haunted reputation. They're there for a vacation, and also - just for fun - to see if they can solve the decades-old disappearance of patriarch Grandfather Harmon, a hermit who practiced seances. Before the group arrives, housekeeper Nora Rafferty, all alone at the time, is visited by a skinny old creep with missing teeth and a European accent, who warns her that there's gonna be a murder at the place, which he says is haunted by the ghost of the Grandpa Harmon, who was also a violinist. Knowing that Nora is the nervous type, this guy lays it on thick. He's one of those ghoulish types you'd see in an old Boris Karloff movie, and after he finally leaves, several cars drive up which scares Nora out of her wits. The cars belong to the members of The Sphinx Club, who as noted are arriving to spend the weekend. In addition to his fellow Sphinxes, the Colonel has brought along his friend, a turbaned Indian named "Yoganda" (C. Henry Gordon) who knows the history of the Harmon clan.
No sooner do they get there than Col. Walters is indeed killed. Then a creepy old hunchback with wild hair visits Nora the housekeeper and tells her he's the ghost of Grandpa Harmon, and that anytime she hears violin music she better start worrying, because when the music plays, someone dies, or at Nora later puts it, "something always happens to somebody."
Zasu Pitts is one of those performers who makes an instant impression. Her scenes are almost separate from the plot, as her role is to react to all the harum-scarum that's going down, while Yoganda the Mysterious Indian is doing his Turhan Bey impression, trying to appear inscrutable while deliberately increasing the intrigue. The younger Sphinx Club members try to solve the murder of Col. Walters, but end up sitting in chairs that have trap doors for seats. This flick has secret passageways in every nook and cranny. There are graves that open up into tunnels, back yard basements, openings in walls; you've gotta watch your step in this joint. In the last twenty minutes, the script starts to gel. It's one of those mysteries where the main point is to have fun in the house, and then you get an explanation at the end. It's very entertaining as long as you don't go looking for holes in the plot. If you saw this on the stage, you'd go back for a repeat performance, and you might do the same with the film, which is directed with flair by the tremendously named H. Bruce Humberstone. I loved "The Crooked Circle", which gets Two Big Thumbs Up and a high recommendation for being eccentric. We'll look for more from Zasu Pitts. The picture is very good. ////
The night before, we had Robert Armstrong of "King Kong" fame in a rom/com crime flick called "The Mystery Man"(1935). Armstrong plays "Larry Doyle", a beat reporter for a second tier paper in Saint Louis. The editor thinks little of his scribes and is excoriating them as the movie opens, before remembering why he called them together in the first place: to honor Doyle's years of service. Even if Doyle is a lousy reporter, the editor has a few "gold watch" trinkets to give him, memorabilia for his years on the job, including a ginu-wine 45. caliber police revolver, fitting for the many crime stories he's covered. Doyle leaves the meeting vowing to make the editor proud of him. At a local diner, he meets pretty "Anne Ogilvy"(Maxine Doyle) and pays for her donut and coffee, pretending to be a millionaire. Doyle is a bit of a scammer, and because the plot took a long time to develop, I was wondering if this was gonna be a screwball comedy. In trying to impress Miss Ogilvy, he takes her to a swanky hotel, orders room service, and then can't pay the bill because, as the manager finds out, he's not Mr. So-and-So the millionaire after all.
The manager says "you owe us money for the meal and your room. I'll give you 24 hours to pay, but then I'm calling the police." Just then a newspaper headline appears: "Mysterious 'Eel Killer' Sought". Some guy calling himself The Eel is pulling off high end robberies in hotels and nightclubs. Doyle tells Anne, "I'm gonna solve that case, that's my ticket to a raise at the paper!" First, though, he has to pay off his hotel bill. All he has that's worth anything is the honorary Police 45. the editor gave him, so he pawns it for 25 bucks and pays off the hotel manager ("hotel" - Mr. Martini). Now he's all paid up, and as a side issue, when Doyle checked in, to avoid scrutiny he told the the hotel manager that Anne was his wife, so everyone now thinks they're married. The crime plot gains traction when the pawn shop owner makes a phone call right after Doyle pawns the 45. Though we only hear his side of the conversation, its clear he's calling The Eel, with whom he's in cahoots. He says, "I've just gotten hold of the perfect gun for you", meaning that - because it's a police revolver - any shooting committed by The Eel will look like a cop did it. But the problem for Doyle is that, when the cops investigate the next Eel murder, they are gonna trace the gun to the pawn shop, and to him, and he will be accused of being The Eel.
As noted, the story doesn't move in typical fashion from A to B to C. At first, it sets the picture up as a rom/com, with the hotel dine and dash thread, which clashes with what comes later. The mix-n-match style would've worked better with a guy like Chester Morris, who would've blown past any scriptural deficiencies with his comedic energy. Robert Armstrong is good, but a little too genial to sustain the crime tension when the going gets deadly. But once it the plot comes together, everything is redeemed, thus Two Big Thumbs Up, and the picture is very good.
That's all for this evening. I'm listening right now to "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by The Alan Parsons Project. Commercial in some respects, but overall a classic that still sounds great. Also, "Missing Pieces" by National Health. Late night listening was Symphony #1 by Scriabin, rather subdued compared to his piano music, but nice. I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but on Sunday I'm going to be singing in church for the first time since March 8, 2020, almost two and a half years ago. I'm a little nervous because I haven't sung since then, but it will be nice to see everyone. It's a reunion of former choir members, which is why I got the call. I may rejoin in the future, but it's still too early to say. Losing Pearl has been very hard for me and I was in the choir because of her. Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes. I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment