The Racketeer (1929)

An early talkie, with the usual problems of the times: dialogue being disjointed and slow, scenes being static. However the film is worth persisting with because of an interesting story: it's a mixture of love triangle and gangster movie.

Robert Armstrong is Keane, a tough NY gangster. He falls in love with Rhoda (Carole Lombard) who seems to be a bit of a sucker for a loser as she left her rich husband for drunk violinist Tony (Roland Drew). Keane helps Rhoda and the bum out, drying him out and getting him a top gig. All he wants is Rhoda's hand in marriage, though she can't deny her love for Tony but will Keane's past finally catch up with him?

So it is fairly unrealistic, in reality Tony would have ended up in concrete wellies. Keane also seems fairly small fry despite being considered the top dog. However the story is quite unusual and the film is better than the sum of it's parts. For some reason the film was banned in the UK on original release though a cut version called Love's Conquest was allowed the following year.

Police Patrol (1933)

Mack McCue (James Flavin) and Bob Larkin (Pat O'Malley) are a couple of detectives and rivals, they end up fighting over the same girl - gangster moll Lil Daley (Madge Bellamy) who is involved with the gangster  the detectives are investigating for murder. The detectives get demoted to the riot squad.

Meanwhile the daughter of the judge in the case gets kidnapped and there is blackmail too. Well it is all rather confusing but more or less makes sense.

The problem with the film is that it just isn't very exciting (until the final act) despite all of the above, everything is rather awkward, slow and stilted including most of the dialogue. However it isn't all bad, Bellamy is great. Really expressive as you would expect a silent movie star to be. The final act of the film has some action (at last!)

Top of the Bill (1971)

Before the TV and movie star, even before the radio and record star was the music hall star. This charming (and frequently rather odd) documentary celebrates the days of music hall, variety and vaudeville which even in 1971 was passing into fading memory (some of the members of the public with memories of music hall were in their eighties).

There is sadness as Ben Warriss and Ken Goodwin give us a tour of former music hall venues which are now bingo halls, shopping centres or even just piles of rubble. Also quite sad is when Ben interviews young passers by and they don't know who he is!

The memories are interspersed by example music hall acts by the likes of Sally Barnes, Charlie Chester performs as Max Miller and Ken Goodwin who does a George Formby impression. Not only has music hall now gone, but the London in this film is largely unrecognisable. Well it was indeed a lost world and it was wonderful.

The Sphinx (1933)

Someone is bumping off stock brokers, there is a suspect called Mr Breen (Lionel Atwill) whom an eye-witness claims was present at the scene and spoke to him... but doctors have proven that Mr Breen is deaf and dumb.

Jack Burton (Theodore Newton) is a reporter convinced Breen is somehow guilty but his fellow reporter and girlfriend Jerry Crane (Sheila Terry) is of the opposite opinion. Has she put herself at risk going to interview Mr Breen?

Yet another low-budget crime drama but this one has some interesting twists (though you will probably guess what is going on before the big reveal) and a great performance by Atwill. Some of the rest has been seen before though including the bumbling cops and wiseguy reporter who acts like he owns the place. Breen uses sign language though it doesn't seem very authentic and most of the time its off camera.

Double Cross (1941)

Double Cross is a middling crime drama, solid but unspectacular. Kane Richmond plays Jim Murray, a policeman whose friend Steve (Richard Beach) is killed during a raid on a nightclub owned by Nick Taggart (John Miljan) and Fay Saunders (Wynne Gibson) who double crosses Steve resulting in his death.

Jim vows to bring down the gangsters and engineers a dishonourable discharge from the police so he can join the gang and bring them down from within. The gangsters are tough though and have the mayor in their pocket...

Not a bad film but pretty shoddy and slapdash at times. Some of it doesn't make a lot of sense, such as when Jim tries to get a clandestine photograph of Nick and the mayor and uses a camera with a flash! Continuing on a photography theme look out for an early example of photo bombing!