The Dentist (1932)

The Dentist is a comedy short film starring W.C. Fields as a dentist (surprised eh?) While he treats an assortment of strange patients at his home surgery his daughter tries to elope with an ice delivery man and he locks her up: mayhem ensues.

A recurrent trope throughout the film is Fields is incredibly forgetful and rather inept. To be honest i'm glad he isn't my dentist!

It is rather corny at times but there are some good lines, such as the patient being asked if she wants gas and she replies she is fine if he uses gas or electric lights!

Broken Blossoms (1919)

Like No Way Back, Broken Blossoms is based on a short story from Thomas Burke's Limehouse Nights collection and like the 1949 film it is rather bleak. It stars Richard Barthelmess as a Chinese man (suspend belief remember?) who travels to the West to spread the message of Buddha. Unfortunately he ends up in London's brutal East End where his idealistic message is a hard sell.

He comes across a poor unfortunate girl played by Lillian Gish who suffers terribly at the hands (literally) of her brutal drunk of a father (Donald Crisp). Richard nurses Lillian back to health when he finds her after a beating and a friendship blossoms. A sanctuary amid the misery, but her father soon drags her back to Hell. Lillian's portrayal of fear and anguish in the closet scene near the end of the film is extraordinary, truly she was the goddess of silent movies.

A film of it's time (the portrayal of Chinese people and China is perhaps a little fanciful) but in some ways not. Unusually for the time, when fears of the "yellow peril" were rife, a Chinese man was portrayed sympathetically in the film, as the hero. The scenes of child abuse shocked at the time and are still pretty difficult to watch now.

The Devil Plays (1931)

This film (also known as The Murdock Affair) is a pretty decent murder mystery. It has a very Golden Age type story with the initial crime taking place in a big house packed full of beautiful and wealthy people in posh frocks and dinner jackets, and an amateur detective (a crime writer to boot) helps out the police.

Jameson Forrest is that amateur and very suave he is too. The victim (Richard Tucker) though is a bit of a cad and various people have motive to kill him including Forrest's lover played by Florence Britton. It can't be the Quincys in the next room though as they were drugged. Or were they?

The film is well plotted and keeps you guessing though isn't without it's flaws. Some of the acting is strangely stilted and a couple of the characters (such as the police sergeant played by Lew Kelly) are a bit annoying. Well never mind that, as a 1930s whodunnit it is very well done indeed.

The Gamma People (1956)

The Gamma People is a bizarre science-fiction film starring Leslie Phillips and Paul Douglas as a couple of journalists who are mysteriously diverted into a tiny Central European country. Here depraved experiments are being conducted (by Walter Rilla playing a suitably sinister mad scientist) on children with gamma rays to turn them into fanatical geniuses (or mindless monsters if the treatments fail as they often do).

Not everyone is keen on these experiments and the two journalists are dragged into the struggle. It is a really strange idea for a film and is played with quite a lot of camp. Playing for a laughs was a good idea as the film is just too silly to take seriously. It is still not a good film by any measure though, more gamma rays needed.

Stars On Parade (1936)

Stars On Parade collects a variety of music hall acts (comedians, singers, dancers et cetera) and what a nostalgia fest it is.

It doesn't all work, some of the comedy sketches are a little drawn out but the next act is usually up pretty quickly anyway. The best acts were the singer Navarre, the magician Horace Goldin, the detective dog Dr Watson, a high energy dance number by the Sherman Fisher Girls and a lovely accordion-backed song by Pat Hyde.

The acts hang on a vague storyline about an investigation into a poisoning but don't take much notice of that! It is very entertaining (at times), quite corny at others and sometimes simply odd (a horse painted white posed as a statue, whats that all about?) A world that's now long gone and that's a shame.