Mon 15 Jun 2015
A Movie Review by Walter Albert: WELCOME DANGER (1929).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[2] Comments
WELCOME DANGER. Paramount, 1929, Harold Lloyd, Charles Middleton, Barbara Kent, Noah Young. Directors: Malcolm St. Clair & Clyde Bruckman. Shown at Cinefest 18, Liverpool NY, March 1998.
This Harold Lloyd starrer was originally filmed as a silent, but converted to sound. St. Clair directed the silent version, Bruckman did the sound inserts. (We were told that the silent version is being restored.)
Harold plays Harold Bledsoe, son of a notable San Francisco police chief, who is called in by the new chief to deal with an outbreak of crime. Harold is a shy botanist who is not what anyone expected and quickly reduces the department to chaos. He does, however, with his sidekick, silent film comic actor Noah Young, stumble onto the Tong’s headquarters and eventually expose do-gooder Middleton as the tong criminal mastermind.
The film is too long [at 113 minutes], and it is extremely repetitive, but it was Lloyd’s highest grossing film. Not top-flight Lloyd by any means, but the best things in it make me want to see the silent version, which should be shorter and better paced.
June 16th, 2015 at 3:33 pm
Harold got a bit self-indulgent in the talkies. His later films all have their moments, but it’s what the kids these days call a mixed bag.
June 16th, 2015 at 4:06 pm
Bits of this are interesting, but my problem is Lloyd succeeds all too well, there isn’t enough chaos or danger to make it fun to watch. Comedy requires far more stress and failure than this has.
The hero reminds me a bit of some of Philip Wylie’s more comic supermen who seem to milk toasts but aren’t. Just not all that funny.