The late Edgar Wallace was very popular in Hollywood. This prolific Englishman, who was able to turn out thrillers with the ease with which a small boy demolishes a plate of ice cream, made a lasting impression on the producers of films. An idea would be presented to him in the morning and before supper he would deliver a completed script. So proficient was Wallace that he was able actually to keep ahead of the demand for stories. He has been dead more than a year and works from his typewriters are still coming from the studios.
The latest is playing at the Rialto this week and it is called “Return of the Terror.” It was made by First. National. Mary Astor, John Halliday, Lyle Talbot, Frank McHugh and Robert Emmett O’Connor are the leading players and manage to give you a mildly exciting evening. Like all horror and mystery tales this one is pretty routine and wooden. It concerns the mad happenings perpetrated in a sanitorium. John Halliday as Dr. Redmayne plays the role of a scientist who, to escape an unjustifiable charge of murder, pleads insanity. He escapes from an asylum and returns to his own sanatarium determined to find out who is guilty of the series of murders that have been committed. The picture then shows you how the innocent medic with the aid of a reporter finally tracks down the culprit. If you use the old favorite method of suspecting only those who appear to be completely innocent you too, can guess the answer.
In the course of events there are the usual score or so of bloody screams, accompanied by a countless number of killings, in fact the solution nearly becomes a case of survival as the greater part of the cast is done in with neatness and dispatch before the picture ends.
CALL IT LUCK
For Films are responsible for “Call It Luck” which is playing at the Mayfair Theatre these cooler days. It is the work of Dudley Nichols who was a few years back one of our better reporters, and George Marshall. Neither writer can afford to pat himself for the effort here portrayed.
The plot, with a capital “P.” concerns the turbulent career of a London cabby (Herbert Mundin) who wins a sweepstake and finds himself possessed of a mere $100,000. Confidence men soon take him in tow and sell him, among other things, a broken down race horse, represented to be the son of the sweepstake winner. The cabby comes to America, buys his way out of a staged murder and finds himself with nothing left of his fortune but his race horse. He enters the steed in a race and of course the horse upsets everyone including his enemies by winning. A great deal more happens and there is a love story which is dragged into the plot for no reason at all. “Pat” Paterson supplies the sex interest in the role of a night club singer in love with a Harvard boy who drives a taxi. Her night club scenes in which she sings are way under par for that sort of thing.
At best “Call It Luck” is grade C entertainment and fit only to make up the second half of a “Two Feature” bill.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
