The Villain Still Pursued Her

 

(1940)
Directed by Edward Cline
Written by Elbert Franklin, Ethel La Blanche
Starring Hugh Herbert, Anita Louise, Alan Mowbray, Buster Keaton, Richard Cromwell, Margaret Hamilton, Billy Gilbert
IMDB Entry

Sometimes bad acting can be fun. Plan 9 from Outer Space is a case in point. And withThe Villain Still Pursued Her, the bad acting is deliberate and very funny.

The movie is a broad parody of the idea of the old-time melodrama. It starts out with a stage proscenium, where the announcer (Billy Gilbert) comes on to introduce the play. Then we see Mary Wilson (Anita Louise) talking with her aunt (Margaret Hamilton) and laying out the situation: Edward Middleton (Richard Cromwell) has inherited the mortgage on their house from his kindly father and they are afraid he will foreclose. Cribbs (Alan Mowbray) comes by to tell them they will have to move. When Edward is on the way to the house, Cribbs intercepts him, pushing him to foreclose, but when he sees Mary, the two fall in love.

At their wedding, the scheming Cribbs inveigles Edward into trying alcohol for the first time. He immediately becomes a drunkard, and Cribbs tries to trick him into crime, which he refuses. Cribbs forges Edward's name on a check, but but Dalton (Buster Keaton), Edward's friend, exposes that crime. and others. With the help of Frederick Healy (Hugh Hubert), Edward becomes sober and all is well.

Everyone overacts. That's the point. Cribbs often addresses to audience to talk about his nefarious plans, while the others will soliloquize about their thoughts and feelings.

Mowbray is full-on Snidely Whiplash as Cribbs, moustache and all.  He was a busy character actor, appearing in movies and films for over 40 years. 

I was interested in the film because the many familiar faces. Buster Keaton was the big one, but he was given very little to do. Margaret Hamilton was Mary's kindly mother, a big departure from her role the year before in The Wizard of Oz. Billy Gilbert did a lot of comedy -- most notably as Mr. Pettibone in His Girl Friday -- and was the voice of Sneezy in the Disney Snow White. Hugh Hubert is forgotten today, but his ditzy character was very popular in the 30s, with his fluttery mannerisms and his catchphrase "hoo hoo hoo," which often was parodied in cartoons. I also spotted Vernon Dent, the Three Stooges' greatest straight man.

Director Edward Cline was responsible with several W.C. Fields features and also directed several of Keaton's short subjects.  

The joke does perhaps go on too long, and has one somewhat racist non-sequitur joke, but it does remain amusing as a send-up of  old-time stage melodramas.

"Pimpernel" Smith

 (1941)
Directed by Leslie Howard
Written by Anatole de Grunwald, Ian Dalrymple (screenplay), A. G. Macdonell, Wolfgang Wilhelm (Story)
Starring Leslie Howard, Francis Sullivan, Mary Morris
IMDB Entry

I'm a fan of the Scarlet Pimpernel, the template for modern superheroes. Leslie Howard played him credibly in a 1934 movie and once World War II broke out, he had the idea of remaking it and changing the time from the French Revolution to the current time. He directed and produced a current-day version, "Pimpernel Smith."

In 1939, Archeologist Horatio Smith (Leslie Howard) takes a group of Cambridge students on an expedition to examine archeological sites in Germany. They soon discover that the mild mannered professor is helping people escape from Nazi Germany. Gestapo General von Graum (Francis Sullivan) is desperate to stop the man. Discovering the person helping them is British, he blackmails Ludmilla Koslowski (Mary Morris) to ferret him out; Ludmilla's father is a Gestapo prisoner.  She finds Smith and urges him to save her father. Smith denies he has anything to do with it, but comes up with a plan to get him and some other prisoners out of Germany, with von Graum suspicious that he might be the man he is looking for.

The movie starts a bit slow, but eventually shows Smith and his students working to achieve the escape.  The Scarlet Pimpernel books showcased the Pimpernels' cleverness, and this version has it in spades. The escape plans are very worthy of the original.

Leslie Howard played the original Pimpernel a few years earlier and clearly wanted to do an updated version for the wartime audience. He is much like the original in most respect. Frances Sullivan makes Von Graum a decent antagonist, though he isn't quite as good as Citizen Chauvelin in the books. 

Overall, this is a nice update on a classic hero.