The Chaser (1928) Review // Applying Queer Theory In A Picture Book Review!

Harry Langdon is yet another black and white comedian that missed my radar when I was discovering a lot of the greats. The one and only Langdon film I’ve seen is Three’s a Crowd in 2019. After learning of ‘queer’ themes in his next film, The Chaser, it became too intriguing to turn down. There’s an interesting article giving its own take on the film called The Trans* Fantasy in Harry Langdon’s The Chaser, written by Sabrina Sonner, which further intrigued me to this story. Langdon’s character is both disarmingly innocent and simple, while having layers underneath. He also plays well enough as a silent clown that does silly things, a uniformity of essentially all these types of comedies. Not a quality of them all is the little ways Langdon can give deeper emotions to his role. After the proper story has started and Harry is clad in a dress, he runs up the stairs while hiking up the outfit. He runs with a youthful drive to manage with what’s going on and solve the stairs in his own way. Most would just go up the stairs normally. When he’s upset later, he jumps up and down with a face of not knowing how to understand the situation, while his distress shines to the surface. We even learn of this character just by how still he sits, like he is a nervous child.

Langdon is great at directing. The lighting captures the tone of a given scene. Many here are damp and moody, so as to suggest the issue at hand. The camera can stare at a character like it’s digging into their soul. Some of those long takes and dry angles can make us feel like we’re trapped in a distressed person’s head. After a scene in court, we learn that something strange was ruled by the judge, with excellent buildup to what the ruling was… that Harry and his wife need to swap their gender roles for a while. The film has generally good editing, but occasional moments that look poor; as if the movie had to be rushed. At one point, all the food in Harry’s skirt disappears after a cut.

Gladys McConnell, Harry’s wife, is also a great actor, despite her limited screen time. Take the scene of her crying or her “acting like a man”, telling Harry to make her eggs. It’d be worthwhile to see more of how her character thinks and feels. She never minds or complains about acting masculine. Assuming she likes it, let’s see her enjoying herself more clearly. If she doesn’t, let’s get some of that. Confusingly, the wife never wears pants. Perhaps the reason she doesn’t is that it might seem too much like a challenge of power. Didn’t want it to seem like that’s something they should be allowed to wear. A man in a dress on the other hand is considered more silly. Harry’s wife is very stylish in the film, while he isn’t.

The first forty minutes follow Harry’s confrontation with his gender-problem, which is very compelling with a lot of sharp scenes. It’s such a shame that the last twenty minutes see a change from this. There’s an unrelated comedy sequence that feels like it was lifted from a one-reel short and thrown in. To top it off, a friend of Harry’s is introduced suddenly when he easily could’ve been included earlier. There’s also a little plot point related to the judge that has no payoff. Why include it? Afterwards there’s a section that is reminiscent of experimental films. This ending third being so out of place and strange suggests it really does have a place, it’s just under the surface. Still, the sacrifice of the story in the first two-thirds is so frustrating that the film can be a disappointment. There was so much that could’ve happened.

SPOILERS

In the beginning, Harry gets home late, so his wife and mother-in-law incorrectly believe he was having an affair with other women. His typical quiet and nervous nature makes him look guilty. The mother-in-law is so furious that she tries to shoot him. She has the line, “I’ll show you how to run around after wine, women and blondes!-” After the duo swap roles, Harry doesn’t initially seem to mind much, just trying to do what he has to. He doesn’t appear to like it, but can easily cope. His wife is far more confident, seeming to really enjoy being assertive. The duo don’t wear their familiar clothes even when no one is around to see them. Even though arguably there was no chance to, a scene of them more expressly hating this would make sense in a story that doesn’t want to challenge 1920s ideals and such a scene easily could’ve been included. They do ultimately change back, but because of outside factors.

One man, who Harry seemingly doesn’t know well, calls Harry madame and his wife his husband. He is explicitly shown to be attracted to Harry. Two other men also have romantic attraction to Harry. Harry is horrified by this and the unwanted kiss of one. In the finest scene of the whole picture, Harry looks at himself in the mirror. While the character is usually timid, here he looks angry and calls himself a sissy, not targeting the man who sexually harassed him, but himself. The lighting is dark and a little angular, as if depicting something scary, yet it’s just normal Harry; which shows how he feels. He possibly thinks he’s gay just for receiving a kiss from a man and can’t handle such a thing, not being able to handle the perception that would afflict him. From here, he seems to more mind his new feminine role. That does introduce a plot hole of why he wouldn’t just take the jail sentence instead of the gender punishment.

From this point on, the film becomes more absurdist and strange. Harry decides to kill himself. He commits to it, but circumstance saves him. It’s a little silly he would rather die than take the jail sentence, which suggests this is supposed to be a ridiculous way to solve the problem. You could say he wanted to die because of being gay, but it still comes off as too sudden. There should be more of him hating the situation first. Harry writes a letter to his wife, whom he mistakenly calls his husband, but he crosses it out and writes “wife”. To contrast, his wife never calls him her wife. After McConnell stretches her acting chops by crying and Harry is shown to be missing, one of the wife’s friend says after seeing her friend find her husband’s suicide note, “Well, goodnight, dearie – we’ve had a lovely evening!”

Probably the most complicated scene of the whole film is when Harry is kissed by a milkman and doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t in any way show a dislike of the kiss, though he didn’t ask for it. Based on how Harry was positioned, he was arguably expecting it and fine with it happening. This isn’t directly acknowledged in the story. The milkman also never appears before or after. Right after, Harry’s friend, Bud, shows up and says, “Take off those skirts! Be a man before your voice changes.” After this, we move to Harry wearing pants and the main plot being kind of dropped. Arguably Harry here is consciously rejecting the kiss that just happened by dressing male. It’s worth noting that he dressed male because he was told to. The movie unfortunately has this weird golf sequence near the end and only returns to the main plot briefly. Will Harry act like how the judge hoped he would after the film? Is there a poignant lack of resolution? Does Harry have to challenge himself or his life? No. The movie just doesn’t tie that up! At least not unless you take certain interpretations from what happens in the last third.

Bud breaking golf sticks could be intended to portray a very aggressively manly man. He’s firing off a lot of self-destructive anger. He later is with a bunch of women and fits in, as if he is a man that knows how to “treat a woman”. When the two find the group of women, the movie becomes much slower for this segment. We get surrealist static shots of Harry and characters moving slowly. Two women he kisses and/or embraces fall ill afterwards. The sickliness and slow pace is like the movie is dying. The scene is so moody and lacking in humor that it suggests some experimental edge to Langdon, like he wanted to intricately portray something, but what doesn’t come across. The lack of stronger things to infer could suggest he didn’t know how to make such a film properly.

Because of Harry being blamed for the women getting sick, the two men have to leave. After an accident, Harry in the car flies down a hill. Him going down it takes a while, but it wasn’t shown to be so long earlier. The car crashes and Harry flies into his house, a bucket of white powder that sadly wasn’t established earlier falls on him. Harry not dying from that could suggest this movie isn’t trying to tackle realism. That’s such a goofy moment that feels out of place from the initial serious comedy and later surreal sequence, though fits reasonably well with the golf portion. There could’ve been more value to the golf sequence or him falling down a steep hill. He could try and perhaps fail to act masculine or feminine, proving some kind of point. That’s not to say he had to act differently, but it could’ve made those sequences matter more in an on-the-surface way.

While probably not, there could be a sexual meaning to certain moments. Harry accepts a kiss from the milkman, but rejects it from someone that sold him items for a baby; Harry hands golf clubs to Bud, who then angrily breaks the phallic-shaped objects; women Harry kisses fall unconscious, with him not kissing his wife at the end of the film; and Harry falling into white powder at the end. All these could suggest that Harry likes receiving male affection and doesn’t fit in with women. The clubs could suggest his friend rejecting homosexuality and finding comfort with women. Harry wants to do the same but it just doesn’t work out for him. Harry handing the clubs to Bud could represent Harry making or wanting to make an advance on him, which is turned down.

Harry does some unlikable things, like kiss a woman without consent. The movie doesn’t “reward” him or clearly state he’s in the wrong. There’s an unreal feeling to how he’s depicted, sometimes childlike and sometimes broken. Based on scenes like Harry calling himself a sissy and being unable to handle his emotions, the film could be about his character confronting his homosexuality, transsexuality, or gender non conforming behavior. The film is like a dream a child might have, specifically a misogynistic one. Harry is an average married man who is accused of doing something ‘adult’ that the child may not understand. Based on how Harry didn’t do such a thing and was just watching a party, you could imagine a child thinking sex might be done by going to a party and cheating by doing that when you’re not supposed to be there.

The child then thinks he’s queer because another man kissed him and is afraid of that. When he is “treated like a woman”, he can’t handle it and tries to kill himself, with him escaping death by absurdist circumstances. The suicide could represent the extreme places a dream can go. Him referring to his wife as his husband could mean he liked the idea of having a husband, but was able to not really address that. If he liked being kissed by men, that’d be harder to push aside. Given that he does really like kissing men, his guard can be later down and can enjoy the milkman’s kiss. The golf sequence matches how dreams can diverge into something only loosely related to what came before, with some hints like Harry’s friend being very masculine and breaking the golf clubs. It also served as a distraction from Harry with the milkman. The male-attraction does creep back in. If Harry likes being alone with a man, but doesn’t want to like it, he could queue in what else but a group of women?

Harry kissing the women represents him finally actually doing the cheating, possibly because he thinks it’ll make him “a real man to just take any woman he wants”, though it doesn’t work. Him kissing women doesn’t fit him, when he tries they go sick. Harry arguably accepts his femininity when after he golfed and “acted like a man”, he crashed into his house into some powder. That incident realistically should’ve killed someone. The powder making him look like a ghost could mean that he did die, except only this need to be masculine did. What’s left is a happy ending of him in that dress and the person in his life he loves not appearing to mind. Their bond is now stronger due to self acceptance. Due to the film demonstrating that gender roles are only as valid as we humans want them to be, the return of the opening title card, “In the beginning, God created man in his own image and likeness. A little later on, he created woman.” at the end could be considered ironic due to the film challenging gender roles. Also, the car crashing through billboards can signify that these sorts of “gender crises” are unnecessary and started by culture and social expectations hitting people in the head.

On the other hand, the women Harry kisses becoming ill could also represent his internal rejection of his feminine leanings, not his heterosexual. The brain wants to “kill the femininity.” Harry getting away with kissing a woman without consent and getting in a dangerous stunt that he makes it out of okay suggests that this aggressive behavior is fine to him. He acts like, “I’m such a man that I can do unsafe things and be fine afterwards!” Despite this, Harry doesn’t act too differently for a lot of the runtime, with him not embracing or rejecting any part of himself or acting differently. He rejects what others label onto him, like “woman”. That could mean he’s unwilling to consider femininity or he is still a valid man even if society doesn’t consider him to be one. At least from a simplistic view, the worst thing that could befall someone like this would be for society to just decide he’s a woman. It doesn’t have to make sense or be true, he just is. He takes it better than you might expect from someone with “toxic” traits.

Harry being in the incident that should’ve killed him and then the powder in the dress means that what is supposed to die is him accepting his femininity. Him in embrace with his wife could mean running to those gender roles and not allowing himself to consider being gay, with the end title card referring to Christianity, which especially in 1928 wouldn’t accept gender divergence. Harry and his wife’s relationship not being healthy is suggested by the reason they reconnect after their rough patch being that she thought he killed himself. That’s not anything inherent to him as a person. She was just afraid of losing him. That can ignite good times, but their actual issues aren’t solved. That would suggest that what Harry really needs is to reject being hyper masculine, but he won’t.

Harry is not good at being a typical male or even a typical female. No matter what he wants to be, his friends want him to be, or society wants him to be, he has qualities of both. The different interpretations could suggest that he is hard to be “boxed into” an identity or that it will take a lot of work to accept himself as something, whether it be a masculine straight man or not. Instead he is more complex. Maybe he’s not gay, but bisexual; or he’s transgender but still loves and wants to be with his wife? Maybe he’s a straight man that likes wearing dresses? The film portraying Harry and especially his wife as comfortable with having elements of both shows this complexity and could hopefully mean that the intended message is that you should be allowed to explore yourself and dress how you like.

OVERVIEW

The Chaser is a film probably everyone interested in silent films, experimental films, queer films, and maybe, maybe films in general should watch. It not focusing much on its original and great, great premise to go with a loosely related segment that could be its own film is a tragedy. The “heightened realism” earlier scenes have is phenomenal. With both this film and Langdon’s previous directed feature, Three’s a Crowd, they have segments that feel out of place and like filler. Certain scenes don’t make much sense or aren’t comedic. Thus, they are ripe for analysis and are great films for thinking about. In a different time, Langdon could’ve been popular with fans of experimental films or if his stories were more fleshed out he could be more popular with silent film fans of the now. Due to the “messy” movie we have to watch, it can’t be recommended on the basis of wanting a good story, but there is more to it if you’re willing to give it a chance.

Harold Lloyd Available The Boy 1917 Films Review

In 1917, Harold Lloyd ditched his character “Lonesome Luke” for a new one. Either by the shorts or by fans, the new character is called “Harold”, “The Boy”, and “the glasses character”. In a way, he wasn’t named. Most of these films don’t address such a thing. Thus, it’s debatable if these adventures are supposed to feature the same person or not, or if only some do. It seems that these films weren’t intended to portray a single continuity. If it did, there’d be a lot of Bebe Danielses and Snub Pollards wandering around, as many couldn’t be the same character. In the bundle of films we’ll be looking at, two films feature him with a random name. Lloyd isn’t always playing the same type of character. He might be more athletic in one and wimpish in another. In some, he is moral and others mischievous. What is the reason these are considered “Boy” films? Fortunately, every “The Boy” film from 1917 survives. Thus, we can get a decently solid look at the early developments of this stage of Harold Lloyd’s career.

A lot of these shorts feel like joke vehicles. Many are around five minutes and thus you can’t really invest yourself in them. The comedy is reasonably generic and low brow. “Harold wants a girl so in order to get her, he does something silly. Snub, a cop, or someone else wants to stop him for whatever reason. People hit each other.” This sort of thing might be more enjoyable if you were seeing one a week, but it’s hard to believe people didn’t get bored. There are two better ones, which are worth watching. Bliss and The Flirt feature more character moments that make the lead feel more realistic and the environment closer to something that could actually exist. Neither are brilliant, but are steps in the right direction.

While a lot of these shorts are very bad, they benefit from being so short. They want you to laugh, so if they fail then we can quickly move on. The ones that are around ten minutes and have more going on story-wise aren’t particularly offensive. They have similar comedy to the shorter films. There’s also the positive of the directing being a little better due to Hal Roach not filling that role. There’s a little more punch to the angles and framing. The main negative is that the three leads; Harold Lloyd, Bebe Daniels, and Snub Pollard, don’t have personalities most of the time. Daniels looks pretty and the other two get into fights or other kerfuffles. They aren’t down to Earth in really any way most of the time and they don’t stick out from other comedy clowns. If this was the only era of Harold Lloyd available, he might be seen historically as any ol’ disposable comedian.

Below are thoughts on specific shorts. All include

SPOILERS

Lloyd’s 75th film: Over the Fence

Through circumstances hard to understand, Ginger (Harold Lloyd) quickly becomes a baseball player, without having proved himself at all. Later, Ginger is very fast and is also able to overpower a large group of men. Lloyd apparently wanted to replace Lonesome Luke with a more realistic character, and this is what we get first time around. Ginger steals baseball tickets from someone and Snitch (Snub Pollard) following steals those tickets from Ginger. Ginger doesn’t check to see if he still has them until he and Bebe are at the game. Amusing in its stupidity, Snitch shows up and Bebe goes with him because he has the tickets. Why would Ginger want to be with Bebe after she left him because another man had slightly more than him, baseball tickets? One big difference between Ginger/The Boy and Luke in what little I’ve seen is that Ginger gets the girl here. If Luke never did get the girl, maybe Harold Lloyd wanted to get a new character so he could?

76th film: Pinched

This was weirdly hard to follow. There’s a lot of intertitles, so maybe it isn’t complete? This short features incompetent police, another commonality of the series. One of the better gags is when Harold buys a cop’s baton so he can hit him over the head, then takes the money back. For some reason Harold dresses as a woman and hits on the cop. It’s a very random-feeling gag. The ending is funny, with Harold breaking out of jail only to appear in front of lawmen.

77th film: By the Sad Sea Waves

Harold becomes a lifeguard, for no discernible reason. What follows has an especially big issue of feeling like story beats were picked at random, down to Harold deciding to be a lifeguard instead of him being one from square one. Notable moments include Harold unfortunately kissing a girl without consent, Harold going to save a drowning Bebe without us seeing it, and it starting to feel like these filmmakers think cops are all really dumb.

78th film: Bliss

An amusing gag includes Harold taking a cop’s badge and scaring him away by pretending to be one. The cop is dumb enough to buy it. The cop doesn’t reappear, with this just being thrown in. A better direction for this short would be to follow Harold with the badge and the cop getting into shenanigans over that, but Harold gave the badge back after that initial joke. Harold possibly convinced a man to sell him a tuxedo by kissing him. Film degradation makes it hard to know what was going on. Another great gag is Harold taking advantage of the man’s hole in his pocket. When he pays the coin, he is able to get it back. Bebe’s dad is so violent. It’s strangely humorous seeing him throw a bunch of guys around like ragdolls, with some obvious dummies for good measure. Hal Roach can’t resist some pointless violence. Occasionally there are strange gags that aren’t necessarily funny. Harold hangs his clothes on a wall and they fall down. It wasn’t established why he wouldn’t notice the lack of a hook. Later, Harold sees a man who lifts his arm to put a spoon in his mouth, but he can’t lift his arm enough. Harold then puts the guy’s arm in a trombone. Who thought of that? Finally, how did Harold pay for that cab if he had no money?

79th film: Rainbow Island

This one is weirdly light on jokes. It’s as if you’re supposed to find the situation inherently funny. The runtime is mostly dedicated to a disposable story. Some of it is told through intertitles, which can pull you out of the immersion. Snub and Harold once again act like a duo, as they did in Clubs Are Trump. This one follows the duo winding up on an island with scary natives. Welcome to yet another outdated trope. One of the stranger moments is that apparently Snub and Harold were out at sea for at least ten days without any sign of food or water.

80th film: The Flirt

This one has more inventive gags than some of the other films, like Harold having a hole in a newspaper for looking at girls. Later, a woman looks at him and he looks back with a donut as if it were a monocle. Earlier on, Snub minds the Boy looking at the cashier girl, without it making sense why. Only we find out at the end that she’s Snub’s wife. That’s a fun thing to toss in the pot. This short taps into a little more the “human appeal” that Lloyd has had in his most famous work. Here he is a person with an understandable human emotion and he sometimes acts the part. He lights up and loosens up when seeing a girl, jumping up on a stool to talk. While this movie doesn’t have a lot of “human moments”, it’s a step in the right direction compared to how cartoonish Lloyd sometimes takes these films. This is damaged by things like Harold throwing a banana peel on the ground (why would he do that?) and a man becoming literally so upset about not getting his food that he starts firing a gun in the restaurant. Neither are very realistic, though the latter is funny.

81st film: All Aboard

A clever gag was Harold blowing in a phone with his tears in it and the tears flying in the face of the person on the other end. This one tries to have a more fleshed out narrative, telling a story instead of hyper-prioritizing gags. It’s not particularly incompetent at this, but the movie just doesn’t really come together, just being quite dull. It’s fun to see Harold rob Snub. Don’t let fictional Harold Lloyd near your money. He will take it!

82nd film: Move On

The comedy in this short is among the less-thought out. You could imagine Hal Roach and friends realizing they needed a short really fast, so made this one up on the spot. A man sneaking into Bebe Daniel’s baby carriage for no reason is an odd joke. A police officer is once again incredibly violent for no reason. Lloyd’s character is named “Chester Fields”.

83rd film: Bashful

Harold drinks a punchbowl at a party. Now no one can have any! Why was he such a jerk there? Harold claiming to be a father and accidentally being given a black child got a chuckle from me. The scenes in this one sometimes cut so quickly that you can’t really take in a joke, not that the jokes here are anything worth appreciating, really.

84th film: Step Lively

At first, this one is reasonably compelling. Harold is so desperately hungry that he tries to steal a sausage and after a dog takes it, chases after them; possibly to get the sausage back. There’s a lot of expected jokes of people running around and hitting each other afterwards. To top it off is a bench appearing in-between a cut. One-reel 1910s editing at its finest. I can’t stop thinking about how disgusting The Boy’s clothes must be after hiding in a trash bin.

OVERVIEW

The modern releases of Harold Lloyd films are reminiscent of Beavis and Butt-Head: The Mike Judge Collection. Judge edited some episodes of his show and excised others, with the earlier episodes more likely to be excluded for not being good enough in his view. Praises and DVDs of Harold Lloyd focus on his 1920s era usually, with highlights from the 10s and 30s. That would certainly be a better introduction to Lloyd than to start from the beginning in 1915. With him and Beavis and Butt-Head, the earlier installments were less interesting and original than what came later. A lot of these 1917 films are terribly dull and only have much value to hardcore fans. There are gems, though. Someone that wants just the decent early Lloyd films should see Bliss and The Flirt. That being said, these films’ historical significance means one can’t be too sorry to have them and it’s in a sense a shame there are lost films or films that are hard to find, but those factors are also built-in ways to make it so people find the golden age first.

Sealskins (1932) Review // Applying To ZaSu Pitts And Thelma Todd Films Part 6

A frame from the film

Sealskins is the first great film in the Girl Friends series. It remains pretty narrowly focused on having our leads get in a little adventure and exploring how things can go wrong and fitting in jokes throughout. Thelma and ZaSu also are pretty closely involved with each other, playing off of the other instead of off mainly other actors. Thelma even actively wants ZaSu involved in the adventure, with the latter not being so interested. As is common with any Hal Roach film, there are editing and logic errors like, “If ZaSu doesn’t want to be there, why doesn’t she just leave?” Of course the reason is that having such a character there is funny, at the cost of that not making sense in-universe. A scene of ZaSu knocking sounds like a man’s hand.

ZaSu is better characterized here than in the past. One favorite moment is when ZaSu is too scared to help Thelma, the latter says then she’ll just leave her alone. Even more afraid of the prospect of being left alone, ZaSu yells Thelma’s name and runs after her. Another great moment is when ZaSu sees something scary and instantly freezes. Thelma, who is looking away from the threat, is confused. Thelma is as always very in-tune with her role. She really shines here with the consistently better lines and directing than before. Her determination to accomplish a goal for the sake of her job seeps into essentially every moment, making her feel like a real person who does comical things and has more going on in her life than work. There’s not a reason why ZaSu has to be involved in this adventure at all, but Thelma forces her to go. She can also be short with ZaSu at points, just like she was in Catch-as-catch-can. For friends of continuity, Thelma’s drive being to look good at her job matches her overall attitude with her jobs.

Other character moments include ZaSu not being able to figure out how to open an umbrella. An unfortunate trope of many comedy series is when a certain character that is just a little ditzy at times will have moments of being inept to extreme degrees. Something like not being able to open a simple umbrella just feels too unrealistic. Tapping into something more relatable for this simple scene would’ve worked better. Fortunately, other moments are better. Later, Thelma opens the door in ZaSu’s face, suggesting carelessness. When ZaSu is scared, she jumps to hug Thelma, possibly finding that comfortable. She may have just jumped and happened to hit Thelma. ZaSu is too scared to take her coat off and Thelma briefly tries to force it off. Why would Thelma care? That’s sadly not elaborated on.

The concept of this film is very silly and it leads to a “throw a lot of strange ideas at the wall” approach. The gags here are more consistently funny than usually. A favorite is, “Pardon me, I’m trying to find a name in the phone book.” “You shouldn’t have any trouble, there are a lot of them in.” Thelma’s character dips into being this weird person that is too razor-focused on a goal and she is so much fun for it. This short is reminiscent of the Buster Keaton film, The Haunted House.

SPOILERS

Thelma says there’s nothing to be afraid of after they believe they just saw two men carrying a dead body. They seem strangely willing to blow off things like that. I’d be afraid I would get murdered in their position. One of the funniest gags in the series, that might be easy to miss, is when Thelma is afraid of something being in the bed, so she hides under the bed. ZaSu, not seeing what transpired, then goes to the bed and tells Thelma to move over (as she thinks what’s in the bed is Thelma). Thelma then rolls over under the bed. The plot twist at the end of the short is very funny and feels very satisfying after taking in the adventure our heroes have been on. Thelma has been trying so hard to go up the ladder in her job that getting fired is an amusing way to relieve that build up. How such events transpired make sense. As an aside, you can imagine Thelma constantly trying to not get fired later on was because of things like this event burning her.

OVERVIEW

It was interesting to note that of the first ten Thelma and Patsy Kelly shorts (the only I’ve seen currently), only one features either of them being interested in dating. Even then, the story is more about them being at odds with each other, with the date in a sense being something to shoot jokes off of. Their lack of interest in other people makes more sense when the first five ZaSu and Thelma films all share an issue of the duo seeming so interested in dating that they don’t interact too much. This is the first short that doesn’t include them having boyfriends or being shown wanting a man. Possibly because of this, they really do act like a duo and have a much better dynamic than in the past. Of course, it’s possible to have both a fluid duo and boyfriends, but it seems this series can only handle one or the other. As a little theory, I’d like to think that after men kept wanting to take them to Coney Island last film, they decided to take a break from dating.

For the earliest Thelma and Patsy films, Todd played a role that was essentially a straight man who was sick of Patsy’s kookiness. That role now seems even more bizarre due to Thelma being such a lovable weirdo in these ZaSu films, as well as in most of the Patsy films. Thelma has a really dumb plan at one point and monologues a little. Some jokes live on the basis that Thelma isn’t acting normal here. This film would be weaker if Thelma was a straight man. Despite being a fan of ZaSu Pitts in her own right and her being a lot better here than in the past, this film probably would’ve been better if it were a Thelma and Patsy short, due to just how great their chemistry is. Pitts doesn’t seem to fit as naturally in this world and with Thelma as Patsy Kelly does.

Red Dwarf S02E01 Kryten // Series 2 (1988) Review Part 1

Context for those unfamiliar with Red Dwarf (Spoilers for Episode 1 of the show)

Dave Lister, played by Craig Charles, is the last man alive. He’s living in the mining ship “Red Dwarf” with a hologram of his dead roommate, Arnold Rimmer, played by Chris Barrie; a member of a species of evolved cats, “The Cat”, played by Danny John-Jules; and a computer on the ship, Holly, played by Norman Lovett. Lister crushes on a deceased member of the crew, Kristine Kochanski, played by Clare Grogan. Kristine and Rimmer died due to a radiation leak that killed everyone on “Red Dwarf”, except for Lister and non-humans.

Red Dwarf is back after a short break. A show known for hiatuses had two full series in one year, 1988. Despite that, we can see an improvement in various aspects of the show compared to Series 1. Namely, there’s more sets and special effects, thus revealing a larger budget. Series 1 didn’t leave the Red Dwarf ship ever, but now we’re going to a new location! Series 2 had the ability to put money into more sets. One nice addition is that The Cat, who notoriously had little to do in Series 1, is more involved here. He’s with Lister and Rimmer more often.

“Kryten” has more quality character moments, focusing a lot on Lister and Rimmer. Holly mentions living in a Godless universe – another reference to religion, something that’s been brought up more than once in the show. We learn of Lister’s time in college. Most importantly, we see the cast’s desire to be with women, which they’ve been starved of. They try to make themselves a little more proper than they normally would be, as they are going to finally meet women. These nods make the characters feel realistic and consistent in their behavior. A lot of the best gags involve David Ross as Kryten. While his replacement actor in the rest of the series is better at the role, Ross can be commended for how funny he is. He has a twinkle in his eye about life and acts like he’s learning to emote. If Ross had played the character in the whole show, he might’ve been acclaimed and fans would say no one could’ve done better. A favorite moment is a tv show Kryten watches called Androids, which parodies Australian sitcoms and the ending theme of Red Dwarf itself.

Much of the episode focuses on conversations with the core cast before they interact with Kryten. While those early scenes are fine in moderation, there’s a little too much and it would’ve paid to increase their dealings with Kryten. The concept of that character feels underexplored. He gets a few jokes and then that’s that. Kryten as a main cast member proved his ability to be a rich personality. Due to how little of the episode is actually focused on Kryten, it’s possible the intention was for this episode to focus on our leads and their back and forths, with a little something at the end to spice things up. Up to this point, we’ve mainly had talking between Lister and Rimmer. It would’ve been a little odd to suddenly focus on something else. Still, there should’ve been something that actually suited that concept.

As an aside, We get a shot of the female crew after seeing their specs on a screen. That shot doesn’t really make sense in-universe. Why would the computer show that? It’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment probably intended to give the audience a better look at them for some reason.

SPOILERS

Rimmer has a more civil conversation with Lister where the former asks him to speak well of him with the girls. When Rimmer says he has had tons of girlfriends, Lister has an amusing look of disbelief. Rimmer’s voice drops a bit when he mentions being beaten up at school. He is slightly more pleading to have Lister fulfill his request of how he wants to be referred to. Little things like that are a testament to Barrie’s acting ability. An element that will come back series later is that Rimmer likes being called “Ace”. Rimmer is shown to be unlikable when he gives a lot of commands to Kryten. He even seems a little fascy with the line, “Well, now, maybe you’ll learn, Lister. There’s a natural order to things in life. Some give orders, others obey.  That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it’s always going to be.”

In small ways Lister is shown to not be so dumb throughout the series. As Rimmer has been studying and failing at learning Esperanto, Lister has been picking it up by listening to Rimmer’s lessons. Lister is good natured throughout the episode, with him trying to convince Kryten to do what he wants and not serve people. Admittedly, this may have been just for the purpose of annoying Rimmer, though Lister does give Kryten his bike. His good nature feels very honest. Rimmer in this episode is pretty focused on himself. As an example, Rimmer, impatient to see the women, wants to leave behind the Cat, who is taking too long to get ready. Lister insists they wait. Rimmer’s selfishness is shown when he couldn’t even stand waiting a little longer. It’s a shame Lister would later be okay with Kryten serving him, which contradicts his character here and the message of this episode.

We quickly learn that Kryten’s female crew is dead. It would’ve been better to learn the crew was dead when our protagonists see them. The look on Rimmer’s face when he sees the crew in-person is priceless. After being told his crew is dead, Kryten gets the great line, “My God, I was only away two minutes.” Kryten, like Holly, has senility that is possibly caused by being alone in space for so long. He apparently cared for the deceased crew for a long time.

Kryten seems happy to serve, but internally he’s disinterested in that. We get a well-acted moment where he speaks of seeing a garden and wanting to find one. That mirrors Lister’s desire to return to Earth. Lister can sympathize and he encourages Kryten to find himself. Kryten says he enjoys watching a particular soap opera and sleeping (getting more human already). It’s a bit odd he even has to sleep. He also refers to reading. It’s interesting to wonder if he only does it for a necessary purpose or if he also does for pleasure. He has a character arc where he decides to become independent and “rebels” against Rimmer, in a very funny sequence. A more gradual changeover in Kryten’s behavior would’ve been nice. The creators may have understood how sudden it was, because there was a scene Lister described that might’ve helped demonstrate a progression. Shame we didn’t see it. Kryten seems a bit uncomfortable rebelling. He’s clearly not used to insulting people. That probably wasn’t intended, but it fits with how Kryten would later be shown to be.

This episode feels a little strange with what would later happen in the series. Lister will want to teach Kryten to insult Rimmer, yet we already saw him do it here. The explanation of “Kryten injured himself and Lister fixed him in a way that makes him like how he was before” makes sense logically, but not thematically. With hindsight, a better ending would be Lister kicking Kryten out and trying to force him to be independent. Kryten would follow that order and do his best.

OVERVIEW

“Kryten” would pay to be more focused on its main concept of this robot that shows up and considers his life. He gets the funniest moments, so the episode can disappoint when he’s not around. Still, what we have is charming and a quality installment of Red Dwarf.

On the Loose (1931) Review // Applying To ZaSu Pitts And Thelma Todd Films Part 5 – With A Spoonful Of Queer Theory

The Fashion Queens of 1931

On the Loose is a welcomed addition to the series. More than before Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts actually feel like friends and have duo-things to do. There are still many scenes of them playing off of a man, which has been very common so far over these shorts. Their “duo scenes” are mainly in the beginning, with them having a conversation in their apartment. The supporting cast is also delightfully fun, with some familiar faces. The always memorable Billy Gilbert (who I’ve never otherwise seen credited as “William Gilbert”) plays a man at a clothes shop who can’t say the right thing. Charlie Hall once again is basically a background character and isn’t of many words, but leaves a mark with his facial expressions. There’s also Buddy McDonald, who is a child with a somewhat adult-looking face.

ZaSu gets a little more character, with her character being reserved to a fault. She comes off as a little sick of her date and putting up with people. That being said, she still doesn’t do as much as she could or should. Pitts is a great actress in her own right, but her performance is somewhat embarrassing, especially in comparison to Thelma Todd. Thelma has her character down way better, desiring more to keep the peace, but is somewhat prone to speaking her mind. It’s always great when she simply gives up on being polite in some way or another. Perhaps the writers knew this, because a lot of the gags and best lines went to Thelma. That being said, the best moment is when ZaSu and Thelma are in bed laughing at some of the men that have taken them to Coney Island. They both feel human to the point of you wondering if the scene was improvised. The only way you can laugh at and love this scene is if you can love the characters, which the girls manage with warm performances. It’s especially nice to see ZaSu open up a little, laughing and feeling comfortable in a situation.

The film starts with the girls getting home from a tiring date. It is amusing that it seems the girls just finished another misadventure offscreen, which I’d like to imagine could’ve been its own film. One very light character moment is when ZaSu takes off her shoes and rubs them, which calls back to her finding her shoes uncomfortable in Let’s Do Things and War Mamas. ZaSu also dumps the sand from the shoes directly on the carpet, with that never being acknowledged. Perhaps Pitts did it by accident and no one noticed it? It’s such an odd thing that one could easily miss. Later, ZaSu and Thelma’s arms are locked as they walk. That’s a subtle element to make them feel like friends. ZaSu and Thelma would apparently rather stay home, but put up with something they don’t like for social reasons. At the end, they were fine being home but seemed willing to go out with some men they just met. You can take from this that they’d rather stay home, but want to humor the men; they like going out either because they like to, for the purposes of being with men, or so they can get things like food and clothes that they don’t have to pay for. Admittedly, them expressing gratitude at being home only to right after seem interested in a date doesn’t really make sense.

Careful, she’s armed!

SPOILERS

To compare Thelma and ZaSu to Thelma and Patsy Kelly, while ZaSu and Thelma undress to their undergarments in the same room, they aren’t looking at each other, though they don’t seem too afraid of the prospect of the other seeing them. In-between a cut, they’re wearing bed clothes that cover a little more than before. Based on the nature of the cut, it seems it was a continuity error to have them in different outfits. A wipe transition would make sense as it would suggest they changed outfits between the cut. The two get in bed together and talk. To contrast with the Patsy-era, Thelma and Patsy don’t seem afraid to be in their undergarments with the other and see them. They also cuddle in bed, which ZaSu and Thelma aren’t shown to do.

One of the funniest gags is when Thelma fires the gun at a man who is about to reveal she’s been there before, with her shooting off his hat. Thelma is in a sense showing a stereotypically “masculine” trait by firing a gun so well and showing off her ability to, one-upping a moderately confident man she’s with. When she thinks a man is being unfairly treated, she tells off the guy about to punch him and then she punches him! She would have more moments like these later. As Thelma would also do later, she is shown to not be afraid of lying to people for money.

Miscellaneous points include: The duo mention having boyfriends at the beginning, but then accept new dates later. Perhaps they are prone to ending relationships? This could explain why they’re always having different boyfriends. We should’ve gotten a short where there’s a montage of all the past boyfriends in this series taking the girls to Coney Island. I’d like to imagine the boyfriends referenced in the beginning of this short were boyfriends we’ve already seen. Another memorable character is ZaSu’s date, Claud Allister, who is very prone to smiling and being cheerful, despite the situation. When he accidentally falls beside another man’s girl, he has this lovable smile. He has such a smile when the man falls in his arms.

The gag of the cast being on a boat that then cuts to them submerged in water is an odd one. It’s really fast and out of the blue. Why would this even be a ride? If the ride malfunctioned, we never saw any scene to suggest such a thing. It’s nice that the wisecrack at the end of that scene is by ZaSu, not Thelma; as if her hatred of Coney Island has beat out her timid nature. The man that wanted to punch out ZaSu’s date is very prone to violence when it appears he’s threatening him being with his date. Violence being a go-to for Hal Roach characters shows up everywhere! This character has a little more restraint by letting him go the first two times. Finally, one gag shows a stunt person in place of Thelma. It seems Thelma’s stunt person is a man.

Laurel and Hardy manage to be very pronounced and memorable in their very minimal roles and screen time, even down to little things like Hardy directing Laurel to remove his hat. You could imagine a movie where they were wandering around and trying to find dates and then found Thelma and ZaSu’s apartment. The last scene of the film features the girls being the ones giving them fuel to be comedic. If the movie wanted to focus on Thelma and ZaSu until the last frame, you could have it so after they’re invited to Coney Island, we never move away from them throwing things at the male duo. That probably would’ve happened if instead of Laurel and Hardy it was two nobodies. This is not a complaint as it’s not like Thelma and ZaSu need every frame to themselves.

OVERVIEW

Here, ZaSu gets more to do, but not as much as Thelma or Patsy later on. The short could’ve worked about as well or better as a Thelma solo film, but at least there are moments for either ZaSu to really shine or them to work as a duo specifically. The minor characters are way too good at walking away from the short being more memorable than ZaSu, though she is involved in the best scene of the whole shebang. ZaSu has left me missing Patsy because no one, not even Thelma, could really out match Patsy. On the Loose is good for some laughs and quality performances and is worth a watch. For friends of continuity, our heroes have the same apartment as in their first short.

That’s all, folks

Clue (1985) Review

A frame from the film

Clue is one of those comedies that was destined to be a Halloween classic. There’s a dark edge to the morbid mystery and a phenomenal cast, topped off with Tim Curry, who delights in every film he’s in. Every character has little flourishes and charms that make them very funny to watch. The witty humor is delivered with either naturalism or comical exaggeration when needed. To elaborate on that, the characters aren’t always realistic, but it’s in a way that fits the tone. It’s like you’re watching a mystery with absurdist elements poking out. The script and directing can let the cast down, however.

While there are a lot of quick jokes that are very funny and witty, the storyline is poorly thought out. The beginning and ending(s) cover a lot of dialogue which serves to explain characters and events over the runtime. Due to the explaining, it’s difficult to get into the story. The middle features generally insignificant wandering around. Theoretically, one could edit so after the setup we get the few key events in the second act before the ending, though such an edit would have offensive pacing. Moments like Mrs. Peacock pressuring other characters to talk about themselves elicit the thought of a screenwriter struggling to figure out how everybody is supposed to get information about themselves out. Lines like the ones in that scene are overly theatrical not for the sake of comedy, but to justify the exposition.

Tim Curry delivers a lot of information related to what’s going on. He partially gets away with it because he’s just so effortlessly sly and natural. There’s also some very funny jokes involved, like when Curry’s character of Wadsworth restages some events and involves the other characters. However, some of this exposition either isn’t from him or is just too much. A lot of the concepts are funny or creative and perhaps they’d take a while to depict more naturally, but it can be so tedious getting scene after scene of explanations. Characters sometimes ask information about others when based on their personalities you wouldn’t think they’d care, like Miss Scarlet questioning someone early on. The pacing suffers badly from all the scenes of telling the audience what’s going on.

The opening is too fast. After a little atmosphere building, the characters are introduced and dramatic things randomly happen. There are bits of light periods, possibly to not make the moments feel so sudden. The cast make do with these sorts of moments, doing probably as good a job as anyone could. They’re so vibrant and filled with personality that it’d be hard to imagine people better at capturing these roles and delivering the mixed dialogue. With lesser actors this could be such a slog. Take Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White’s famous improvised monologue, “Flames on the side of my face”. Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock similarly has a great moment of acting like she doesn’t know what to say. Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum’s forward behavior makes him easy to hate, with this weird devilish personality brought to life by Lloyd.

Some miscellaneous comments include: There’s a lot of shots of women’s bodies, with a grotesque nature to some of them, like any excuse to include them was taken. This sometimes adds to the allure of the mansion most of the film is set in. It’s very forward about how it presents people and how it’s unorthodox. Some moments, like a woman’s butt being grabbed and us getting a close-up of it, don’t really have anything to put towards the vibe and feel gross and pointless. Secondly, there’s a real fake looking eye-poke and some other shots of characters being hurt, with the ways to fake that due to the actors not really being hurt being less than stellar. Finally, Lesley Ann Warren as Miss Scarlet’s car won’t start so she leaves it with the car still on. That is the death of me.

SPOILERS

Some favorite jokes include three men crossing their legs upon hearing about someone’s demanning (which I’ve remembered since first seeing the movie in 2018); “No Mr. Green, Communism is just a red herring.” is such a good line, the political jokes are among the sharpest written; and Tim Curry monologuing throughout. The ending sequence of him running around and restaging events from the film as if he’s a child excitedly describing an amusement park is joyous to watch. Curry wasn’t the first choice for the role, which sounds insane. Rowan Atkinson was considered, which would’ve been a very interesting choice, though a significantly inferior one. The film seems to reference an outdated trope of a woman in hysterics being “slapped to her senses” (which Airplane also parodied). The slap was also very fake looking. That’s an amusing way of giving this a “50s” feel.

You’d expect the characters to be more intimidated by how spooky everything is. When it’s revealed that they’re all locked inside the house, they don’t react much. You’d expect that to terrify them. When everybody receives a wrapped present of weapons in a box, they touch them, confused. I was expecting their fingerprints now being on them to come in handy at some point. You also might think someone would be concerned about fingerprints. Yvette, who just screamed in fright and is now crying, explains why she did so and answers specific questions. It’s weird and unrealistic for her to basically stop to satisfy what the audience wants to know. While it’s understandable for characters to break from what’s realistic for the sake of elevating the story or selling the comedy in certain circumstances, this is yet another example of plot convenience.

Colonel Mustard’s plan of everyone splitting up was pointed out to be not a very good one, but then everybody still did it. In fact, their splitting resulted in several deaths. A relevant plot point later on is that Professor Plum mistakenly believed Mr. Boddy to be dead. It’s just a little convenient, don’t you think? Wadsworth reveals that he invited the policeman and motorist, though they don’t act like they’re at their intended location when they arrive, instead like they happened upon this place and were going somewhere else. Michael McKean as Mr. Green seems more virtuous than the others, with them being more “aggressive” or violent than him. In one of the three endings, the other six main characters each commit one murder. However, he then shoots Wadsworth for no reason. What was the point in that, especially because he revealed himself to be part of the FBI and was to have the others arrested for confessing to murder? As an aside, if Tim Curry dies in a movie, it’s a sad ending.

OVERVIEW

It’s pretty fun to have the three endings one after the other as a modern viewer, but for those seeing just one in the theater, the first two may have seemed a little anticlimactic. Even the third could be better. It’s a lot more satisfying to have them together, which suggests that there’s a million ways for the events to have occurred and you can essentially pick how you want things to go. Even though one of the endings is picked as the “real” one, it’s deemphasized by the others and thus doesn’t really matter or feel like the ending. The filmmakers were right to exclude the fourth ending, which didn’t sound as funny and breaks the perfect “rule of three” approach to the three resolutions.

Clue is a fun movie to watch once for the Halloween season for its excellent cast and humor. The story and pacing are a lot more rough around the edges, but they aren’t a big deal if you want an enjoyable comedy. There’s a dark wit, crass moments, and so much madcap insanity that there’s three endings, which gives it an unworldly and unique feel.

ON THE CORNER AND OFF THE WALL

Upon watching The Apartment in theaters a while back, the audience seemed uncomfortable by a scene where a woman is slapped by a man as if it’s healthy for her (excuse my vagueness so as to avoid spoiling that fantastic film). That 1960 movie can feel a little silly for including such a thing, though of course the audience of the time would see that differently. It’s good to know that by the 80s people were making fun of it.

The Grand Dame (1931) Review

Oh, a merry life to live!

The Grand Dame is the first ever film to feature one of my favorite comedians, Patsy Kelly! Just as you’d know her in some of her most famous work, here she’s cladded in fashionable 1930s clothing and simple comedy scenarios, often set in few locations that were probably cheap to get. Unlike in her other works, we get to see her being cordial with upper-class society, wear a monocle, and wear nothing at all. This film is eight minutes; as is the case here and with a lot of one and two-reelers I’ve seen, there isn’t much of a story. It’s like a highlight reel from a longer film. Various characters in Dame could’ve been elaborated on in a hypothetical longer version of this plot. There’s even intertitles to explain some things that could’ve been scenes on their own. It comes across as a reconstruction of a partially lost film. This movie never strives for greatness and never achieves it, but that’s perfectly fine.

This is a charming vehicle for Kelly’s comedic chops. It’s believable that this could’ve been designed to inexpensively showcase her talents. Despite being her first film, she’s very in tune with her character. This easily could be a Hal Roach short she’d later do many of in how similar the comedy and Kelly are to Roach’s style. This is not one to watch for a story, just for a quality performer being given some moments to shine. Weak storylines are also sometimes present in Roach’s films. If you like Patsy Kelly, then her wisecracks are delightful as always. If you hate her style, this won’t win you over or be an exception to how she normally is. The other actors are reasonably undeveloped, not that they’re prompted to be with the exception of the boyfriend of Peggy, Kelly’s character.

Kelly even isn’t very convincing at being in love with a man, which she has never been good at, with her predictably lacking chemistry with her boyfriend, Al. He even says, “Remember you’re a lady.” That’s the sort of thing Thelma Todd would say to her. He tries to embrace her only for Peggy to stop him, as he’s messing up her outfit. Pretty much any classic movie dame loves such affection from a man, but not Peggy. Donald Kirke, who plays Al, is decently young and handsome. Seeing as Kelly couldn’t convincingly be romantic with him, why not have an old man play her boyfriend, with the suggestion being that she’s with him for his money or resources? Her distance would make more sense. Kelly’s sexuality creeps out in another scene where she’s literally being bathed by a bunch of cute female maids. How did they get away with this? That is a striking way to introduce Kelly to the silver screen. In tandem with it are many funny jokes.

SPOILERS

Al has one little scene before being gone for the rest of the runtime. Peggy’s being taken to an event, so it’s odd to show him, but not have him accompany her. That seems like an obvious element to include. That could possibly dilute from the story’s heavy focus on Patsy. A favorite gag at this point is Peggy licking her monocle clean after dropping it in her drink. It’s a strange joke, but that strangeness makes it memorable and more laugh-inducing, as you wouldn’t expect something like that.

There is a conflict established in some scammers wanting to trick Peggy into giving them money. Whether the film really wants you to care about this is up for debate. When these “story-light” films include a story like this, they should only be to service humor, which this does, but the seconds of humorless moments can feel out of place because of this structure. This film has these “dry seconds”. How the story resolves itself is peculiar. Gangsters arrive to rob the place, with one having both his hands in his pockets. You’re supposed to think he’s got a gun in there, but there’s so little room for one. They recognize that everybody is a swindler and quickly leave. Peggy then realizes she’s being tricked. On the surface, this very short ending is light on humor, unless the joke is supposed to be that the ending is so ridiculous. That doesn’t really come across clearly, but the movie still works regardless due to how little time is taken. The ending would be pretty annoying if it was much longer.

OVERVIEW

The main difference between Peggy O’Rourke and Patsy Kelly’s later character which took her name is that Peggy is interested in progressing up the social ladder while Patsy more wants to be able to be herself. Thelma is more interested in these social progressions. It’d be fun to imagine the Thelma and Patsy version of this story. We could fit in another reel of the duo at the party being fish out of water. The Thelma and Patsy film Soup and Fish and the Thelma and ZaSu Pitts film The Pajama Party both feature the duos at parties trying to fit in. The Grand Dame is a grand comedy to watch if you like brilliant wisecracks.

War Mamas (1931) Review // Applying To ZaSu Pitts And Thelma Todd Films Part 4

War Mamas is unfortunately quite a step below what’s come before. It feels like a feature film that had to be cut down to twenty minutes, with everybody trying to make the story make sense at the sacrifice of including humor, or even making sense. While there generally are the logical scenes to make the story not have holes, there’s no room to breathe and thus you can’t really get invested in the story. The pacing is so hectic. There is a point where an intertitle explains something that could’ve been a good joke. As is, it comes across like such a scene was planned, but not filmed. Despite the apparent desire to avoid holes, there are many.

ZaSu is given a little personality in how she is fluttery and talks to men, but she hasn’t really come together to feel like a character. Pitts feels like she doesn’t know what character she wants to be, so she’ll be very muted as to not contradict herself when she figures out what she’s doing. Thelma on the other hand presents a whole person in how she moves and acts. She is able to be very sugary sweet and sentimental, which can be a ploy to trick people, but also sincerity on her part. Sadly, she and ZaSu aren’t given as much comedic material as they should. Too much of the film isn’t really trying to be funny and sometimes moments are given to elements other than the girls. This series called The Girl Friends would benefit from just sticking to them, at least long enough to make them feel more rich and compelling to watch.

The two finally have some duo-interactions. As an example, Thelma helps take ZaSu’s tight boots off. They even hold hands at one point and Thelma calls ZaSu her “girlfriend”. Despite this, more concrete moments would sell them better. There’s even some boyfriends that feel really forced in. For whatever reason, one leaves early on. Why include him? The girls don’t have much romantic chemistry with the guys. It’s as if the people making these would mind the girls not having a romantic attraction every film. About thirty years later The Lucy Show would be released. People joked about the unmarried female leads being lesbian. Maybe someone here thought that conclusion may be drawn? As an aside, I’d like to think Guinn’s character in Catch-as-catch-can is the same as here.

This short emphasizes the disposability this series sometimes has, for better and for worse. You can respect something that just wants to make you laugh, but not when such a task is failed at so badly. The storyline being so broken and hard to follow and the short seeming to care more about that than jokes makes it feel like something that could only appeal to someone that wants a quick twenty minutes of 30s fluff that has humor and tropes and women. A lot of the films in this series dabble in that, though usually with something more to offer, which is at least more or better jokes than in War Mamas. It’s literally busy setting up a plot… in a twenty minute film! Hurry up! This short probably could’ve been a feature with the amount it wants to do. Certain scenes feel very rushed and like there wasn’t the time to script or direct them properly. The various bit characters could’ve had a purpose in a longer version of this story.

SPOILERS

One of the strangest gags is when Guinn pretends to shoot an annoying woman. It’s not really funny and seems almost like some writer venting about something. That woman disappears from the story soon after. Most of the minor characters show up either for humor or plot and then disappear. Due to them being focused on with some detail, like establishing the woman’s relationship with our heroes, you’d expect pay off that doesn’t come. Later, Guinn William’s character explains why he will leave the other main characters and then is never seen or mentioned again. He provided setup with no payoff. Why have him mention having to return to the American line so suddenly if nothing will happen with that?

The movie slows a little bit so it can make fun of Germans, then it slows a lot for a scene of strip poker! Welcome to pre-code cinema. The strip poker scene is one of the few times this short can stop and breathe. The pacing is good, with the film not trying to immediately move on to the next thing. It’s slightly jarring to suddenly go from a fast-paced story to something normally paced. It doesn’t rhythmically play well and more like we’ve decided to stop. This few minutes-long sequence is very funny, with Thelma and ZaSu tricking the men they’re playing by making up certain rules to poker so they can’t lose.

OVERVIEW

While a lot of these Thelma Todd comedies sacrifice all, including good storytelling, for the sake of humor; now we get a directionless bit of nothing that could pass for an incomplete script written for a different series. By the fourth Thelma and Patsy short, the pieces were about together, but this feels yet again like an experimental installment, to put it nicely. “We don’t know what we’re doing, so let’s take some random elements and throw them together, so we can assess what works.” Unless you’re a super fan, you should only watch the last few minutes. It has the best gags and Thelma Todd looking cute in that suit.

The Pajama Party (1931) Review // Applying To ZaSu Pitts And Thelma Todd Films Part 3

A frame from the film

The Pajama Party is the most cohesive ZaSu and Thelma short so far. It bothers to stay focused on our duo and let them be funny. The bundle of gags are a good bunch, so it’s a delightful film to watch. It has the same opening as their first short, with a group of men singing to Thelma and her enjoying it. The lead singer is her boyfriend, who she is making eye contact with. It’s a shame the theme tune of the shorts wasn’t deviated from more often. This also harkens back to a character point of the first film, men gravitating towards Thelma. Admittedly, here they are rehearsing their vocals for their job, not singing to her for no reason, the latter being the reason in Let’s Do Things. It still is interesting that here they are by her perhaps unintentionally.

ZaSu is funny and gets more to do. We see her reaction to an attempt to fit into a new environment, but bizarrely, she acts as if she was an alien with no idea what she’s doing, coming off like she’s never met a human before. That all being said, Pitts is light on moments that tell you about what’s going on in her character’s head. While some of her actions are based on her doing her best to fit in, some of the specific things she does are odd. She doesn’t feel very realistic as Pitts doesn’t seem to know how her character should take situations, unlike Todd who is very in tune with her role.

Thelma delights in being part of upper class society, while ZaSu doesn’t. The latter apparently would rather be near what’s familiar. Thelma on the other hand has a degree of desperation in how much she wants to ascend the social ladder. When she slips and falls in a bathtub fully clothed, she acts like it was intentional and starts washing herself. This sort of dynamic would appear in the Patsy era. Just like ZaSu, Thelma as well can seem like a fish out of water. While this is a place they aren’t familiar with, they’re still dealing with just people. Just act like a normal person! As an aside, while Thelma washing herself doesn’t “show anything off”, I wonder if the intention was for it to be more sexual. Her clothes are pretty thick, but there are points where her curves are apparent.

The girls’ boyfriends are the most prominent characters here other than the leads. They don’t get a ton of screen time, but they get enough that the film would play better if they were funny. Humor is generally absent from their relatively serious plot and thus the film is too slow here. The bit players are generally sharp with their very minor roles, especially Charlie Hall, who appears in several of these shorts. A lot of these old films have a way of finding interesting faces to play roles like this. Hall has some fun interactions with Pitts. Thelma and ZaSu are sadly light on interactions, so these minor actors are appreciated. Maybe the reason they have different boyfriends every time is so they can be interacting off of a new guy each film? The fact that the duo have had different boyfriends each film suggests that their strangeness isn’t able to keep them in relationships. While some of the dynamics and performers are funny, it sometimes seems like the boyfriends are being forced in. Here they are particularly weak.

SPOILERS

The film loses its own story for a little, not being about the girls’ plot related to their boyfriends after the first few minutes. It’s played as silly for doing this, shown by how unfamiliar the new environment is made to be, like something more interesting was found. The original plot does ultimately come back around, though. It’s a fun twist to have us think the movie would never return here, especially because exploring this party is a better story. It still ultimately is necessary to finish what was started. This is reminiscent of The Three Stooges, who sometimes literally would not return to a plot point after it is moved on from. Here, the writers are more careful with their Chekhov’s guns.

Some miscellaneous moments include our heroes obviously not being wet after falling in a lake. ZaSu is uncomfortable with a maid trying to take her clothes off, but Thelma doesn’t seem to mind the treatment. The maid laughs at ZaSu’s underwear, though is wearing the same kind. Why she’d do so, who knows? ZaSu is called unladylike at one point. This furthermore emphasizes the duo not belonging. Despite the odd ways the partygoers can act, they conform to social expectations of the time for them and mind someone who isn’t, even if it’s in minimal ways. ZaSu at the end pushes the woman who invited her into the pool for the sake of being a final joke. We should’ve had something like ZaSu having an issue with her earlier, so this has an actual place instead of coming from nowhere.

Thelma seems excited for this opportunity to involve herself in a party that appears to be filled with wealthy people. While a little unnatural at fitting in, she seems willing to accept how they are for the purpose of wanting to seem like she belongs. When Thelma’s boyfriend is upset with her for apparently lying about where she would be at that time, she lessens her ruse. For starters, despite her constant portrayal of confidence, an example being when she acts like she knows how to fit in when talking to ZaSu, Thelma can’t just tell her boyfriend why she’s there. She also doesn’t have the “confidence” to just be herself from square one. She later punches men that want to show her around (while the reason isn’t really clear, it’s seemingly because either they’re trying to get fresh with her or she doesn’t want to look away from her boyfriend) and thus is asked to leave the party. Seeing as her intentions were to fit in, it’s interesting to see her somewhat mindlessly destroy that. When she’s not really trying to fit in, she seems more confident. She doesn’t want men bothering her, so she’ll punch them out the way. Thelma follows the Hal Roach rule of being violent to solve a confrontation.

As an aside, Thelma gracefully leaves with the men wanting to show her around, while not looking away from her boyfriend as much as possible. This suggests she’s only going with them to make him jealous and will return to him as soon as possible. When she returns to watching her boyfriend, she looks annoyed, perhaps as if she was just groped by them? Why would she seem annoyed otherwise?

OVERVIEW

The main issue here is that ZaSu and Thelma don’t interact much and by extension don’t feel like friends. They both separately and funnily play off of bit actors. It’s understandable why Thelma and Patsy didn’t have boyfriends, as they distract from them playing off each other. The short also lacks finality, though the “final joke” is good. The Pajama Party is a quality comedy vehicle, though with it and the first two shorts, these might’ve been better as Thelma-solo shorts. That way Thelma’s boyfriends wouldn’t be distracting from someone else and it wouldn’t feel like only one member of the duo is being cared about. Let’s Do Things shorthanded ZaSu, Catch-as-catch-can shorthanded Thelma, and now this film gives each their own loosely related adventures.

Catch-as-catch-can (1931) Review // Applying To ZaSu Pitts And Thelma Todd Films Part 2

A frame from the film

Catch-as-catch-can is ridiculous. It’s very Hal Roach in how off the wall it can be. For that it’s highly commendable. Unfortunately, it is pretty light on our two leads; ZaSu and Thelma are sidelined really hard. A lot of the gags are given to bit characters and the very funny Guinn Williams, who may as well be the protagonist. He would make a quite weak one due to not really having an arc or progression. His character traits, other than being really strong, don’t ultimately have relevance. If you can forgive this movie not really caring for its main characters, then you can love it for the gags. Gags like the ones in the wrestling ring are sometimes phenomenal. This all being said, The leads aren’t given nothing. A highlight is in the beginning when the two have a very natural conversation, which feels like an unscripted conversation. They’d have another one of these a little later in On the Loose.

This is another short that really feels like a three-reeler that was cut down. Thelma is very snippy and short tempered with ZaSu for no real reason. Something little happens and ZaSu is blamed by her. Perhaps there were scenes of Thelma being bothered by ZaSu, who then snaps in response? Even if that was the case and those scenes were put back in, it’d be ideal for her snapping to come at a pivotal moment of sorts, instead of feeling randomized. Anyone who watched this movie without knowing it’s a Girl Friends film might be confused why Thelma and ZaSu are together. They don’t interact much and are both much more focused on the man in their life.

Even ignoring the Kelly films, Thelma seems reasonably fleshed out based on these two films (though not as much as would be ideal), with her being self-confident and ready to act when she needs something. ZaSu simply comes off as nervous and awkward in social situations. There’s an unfortunate lack of nuance to her performance, as if Thelma demanded to not lose any focus to her and ZaSu was too nervous and polite to say anything. Despite this, ZaSu has a point to being in the story. Thelma feels unnecessary and gets a small few funny moments that are incidental and easily could’ve been removed. She sometimes reacts to ZaSu or talks to her boyfriend. We never learn anything about Thelma and her boyfriend together, so why this pointless and not even comedic element was included is beyond me. Some little character moments include ZaSu, who is working as a phone operator, telling the caller to wait so she can talk to a man she’s interested in. The casual conversation with Thelma at the beginning shows that she isn’t timid all the time. These sorts of things you can almost miss are great for making a character feel real.

For friends of continuity, ZaSu apparently isn’t with her boyfriend from the first film. Seeing as Thelma didn’t like him and ZaSu wasn’t good at saying no to people, perhaps she took Thelma’s advice? ZaSu said she’s only been away from her farm about a year and she wishes she was back. That suggests how long Thelma and her have been together, though it could’ve been shorter than that, and potentially explains why she ultimately leaves. Seeing as Guinn Williams would later play a wrestler in Kelly the Second, it’d be fun to think he’s playing the same character.

Poor editing results in jokes essentially just starting or stopping. It’s like a woodchipper did the cutting and sequencing. ZaSu’s hat appears in different places throughout the film. She even said she lost it, only to have it back next time we see her. The first half of the runtime is strangely light on jokes. It’s setup for the much better second half. It’s not as tedious or boring as it could be, but could use a trimming. The well-performed characters are fun enough to watch, but this sort of story would benefit from the barrage of humor that Hal Roach films sometimes are. The story is so weak that gags are needed to make up for that.

SPOILERS

No one can resolve with words, only anger. People get in a tizzy over things like ZaSu’s hat and no one can just calmly say anything or try to resolve the problem. The man directly blocked by ZaSu’s hat quickly goes to taking it instead of asking her again or trying to get her to switch places with Thelma. It’s a little frustrating seeing ZaSu put the hat on, knowing there’s an angry person behind her who has told her to take it off. Moments like these also characterize ZaSu more. Gags like someone’s head being used to crack nuts or ZaSu getting bruised in the audience aisles are funny. One of my personal favorite gags of the whole series is when after a man sitting near Thelma disrupts the fight, everybody throws cushions at him. Thelma opens an umbrella to shield herself and laughs hysterically.

OVERVIEW

The movie earns a viewing due to the manic and delightful last few minutes, topped off with a simple, but hilarious final joke. The most of the film feels so lacking in substance that you’d think someone came up with a good ending and then added in random scenes before, without care to what makes sense or focus on who the main character is. None of the film is particularly poor, though a lot isn’t as special. ZaSu and Thelma are more used as joke receptacles than as characters, though both find light moments to inject personality into what they’re doing. The final joke even focuses on Guinn and not the girls, so you’re likely to walk away from it thinking of him.

ON THE CORNER AND OFF THE WALL

Five years later, Guinn Williams would play a wrestler in Kelly the Second, which features Patsy Kelly and feels like it could’ve been in the same universe as the Thelma-ZaSu-Patsy films. His characters have different names, but his here, Strangler Sullivan, sounds like a stage name. Seeing as he’s not interested in Kelly’s character in this earlier film (for obvious reasons), he looks younger, wasn’t shown to be a wrestler in Kelly, and here is eager to be back on his home farm; I’d like to think his manager was sick of him prioritizing his farm life over wrestling, so gave him brain damage that caused him to partially forget who he was, including that he was a wrestler. His manager decided it’d be best to cut his losses by firing Sullivan and leaving him without resources, so he became a truck driver where he would ultimately find Patsy. Either before or after he became a soldier in War Mamas. Makes perfect sense!