Thursday, August 9, 2018

Motive for Revenge (1935)

A rather corny crime/revenge thriller but it has characters you end up caring about. It stars Donald Cook as Barry, married to Muriel (Irene Hervey) who has expensive tastes and a mother (Doris Lloyd) who is determined that her tastes are sated (and is generally the mother-in-law from Hell.

Donald has to turn to crime to pay for it all but ends up caught and in gaol. Then Muriel divorces him and ends up marrying the rich but rather unpleasant Edwin Maxwell...

On release from prison Donald seeks revenge though things don't turn out as planned when his ex-wife's new husband ends up shot. Both Donald and Muriel are blamed by the police and are thrown together...

So pretty corny but an enjoyable film. What does drag the film down a bit is a rather drawn out police chase film (the police being idiots of course) and some more padding out. The ending is rather surprising but does enable a Hollywood happy ending.