Too lukewarm for Glasses

 HOT WATER (1924)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Although not as breezy or as tightly woven as some of Harold Lloyd's other features, "Hot Water" is still fun but not great fun, not the type of raucous, chaotic fun that mirrors Lloyd's Glasses character at his best.

Lloyd is Hubby, also known as Harold, who runs like the wind at the beginning with his friend to get to the wedding. A meet-cute opportunity arrives as Harold knocks over a young woman with beguiling eyes, later to be known in the credits as Wifey (Jobyna Ralston). They are somehow meant to be together. Flash forward to the usual clumsy antics of Harold as he tries to carry groceries and wins a turkey in a raffle to boot. There is no car so he must ride in a trolley where a spider finds itself crawling up his leg! You know, the usual tomfoolery.

The rest of "Hot Water" has to do with Harold's resistance to his strict mother-in-law (Josephine Crowell) who gives speeches on the dangers of imbibing alcohol and is in town visiting, along with Wifey's cigar-smoking, dumb brother Charley (Charles Stevenson) and her little troublemaking brother, Bobby (Mickey McBan). They all ride in Harold's newest acquisition, a Butterfly Six automobile which will take about 50 plus payments to pay off! Naturally things go haywire on the road with an insane traffic jam and a motorcycle cop, resulting in much damage to the car after one too many accidents and some near-misses. Then we get to Harold imbibing a whole flask of alcohol and burping his way to a formal dinner with Wifey's mother where he awkwardly handles hot dinner plates. 

"Hot Water" should've been tightened up in terms of comic timing and it is quite uneven between the three episodes that break up the film. The trolley car is somewhat chaotic and often funnier in spirit than in form (the turkey should've reappeared towards the end). The Butterfly Six ride doesn't seem to have quite enough chaos either - more oomph in its comic engine was needed to make it a real blast. The last episode with Harold thinking he's in trouble with the law because he wrongly assumed he's killed his mother-in-law with an excess of chloroform is ecstatically funny and has a lot of punch. The mother-in-law sleepwalks and Harold runs around the house enduring one obstacle after another (my favorite bit is when he thinks he's been handcuffed!) We like to see Harold enduring pratfalls and still maintain his standing as a romantic leading man in ways his contemporaries like Chaplin and Keaton couldn't quite muster. "Hot Water" is a good flick but some of it is still lukewarm. 

B is for Boring B-Movie

 EAST OF BORNEO (1931)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

This is one of those 1930's jungle adventure thrillers that serves up a title of a geographical location that is visually identical to any location in any other pre-Code adventure film. Borneo is the largest island in Asia yet any unique features to that island are not present in this film. "East of Borneo" is yet another B-movie flick that was clearly shot in the studio backlot (it was cheaper to do so in those days) and its only real authentic look is the inside of a prince's luscious-looking golden palace and obvious stock wild animal footage.

The mechanical plot is just a set-up - Rose Hobart is Linda Randolph, the "white woman" as prefaced by the Borneo natives who announce her arrival with a series of gongs and drums. She has travelled 6,000 miles to find her husband, Dr. Clark (Charles Bickford), a drunk physician to the island's charmingly devious Prince Hashim (Georges Renavent). There is much squabbling between Linda and Dr. Clark, and the Prince clearly wants the woman for himself (it must get lonely there despite the presence of Lupita Tovar as a servant and various other female servants). We do get lots of close-ups of tigers, monkeys and hundreds of crocodiles - in one particularly intense scene, a bunch of those hungry crocs devour a native and tear him apart. 

Still, there is not much to "East of Borneo" and the only real thrills occur during a volcanic eruption after the Prince is...well, if you feel the need, watch the movie for the early foreshadowing bit of dialogue by the Prince himself. Charles Pickford is a dullard at best and Rose Hobart merely stands around as window dressing (she fared better in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" with Fredric March). Georges Revenant is the only one who relishes his Prince role and gives it the spark it needs. The jungle footage, inadvertently thrilling, is indistinguishable from what you might find in a Tarzan flick or several other jungle adventure films. 

One fascinating aspect to "East of Borneo" is that an experimental filmmaker, Joseph Cornell, took clips from the film spliced with footage of an eclipse and did a 20-minute short called "Rose Hobart." Though not one of my favorite so-called "Surrealist" films, it is far more galvanizing than anything in this run-of-the-mill flick. 

Eccentric, impatient and in love

 DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1931)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The famous Robert Louis Stevenson Gothic story has had many incarnations and though I profess to not have seen them all, this 1931 Fredric March version from Warner Brothers is easily the best. It is a frightening film, nightmarish in its look and atmosphere and in particular Fredric March's truly exceptional, layered Oscar-winning performance. It stands in the tradition of the Universal Monster flicks as a haunting, ghoulish classic.

The gentle Dr. Jekyll (Fredric March) helps patients with various disabilities or ailments yet he also can perform, um, well miracles to some degree (he gets a girl to give up her crutches and she starts walking - is he really a miracle worker or was this girl's disability only in her mind?) As a scientist in Victorian London, he is dedicated to proving certain thesis from the standpoint of presenting new ideas in the medical field. His latest thesis is that man has a dual nature, and the other side is the beast, the dark side that can be roused and separated from the good. Eventually Jekyll drinks a potent potion he concocted that allows him to unearth a beastly, simian-like appearance with canine teeth and an appetite for lust, women and drinks - "I am free!" he exclaims. He carries on with a top hat and cape walking the streets of London as passerby look on with disbelief, and he speaks and grunts and has no manners whatsoever at a bar and restaurant while insisting a blonde bar singer named Ivy (played by Miriam Hopkins, who has many ungentlemanly callers) sit at his table for a drink. Hyde is a carnivorous, sexual animal who performs demeaning acts unseen by the audience (even in pre-Code days, you could only suggest so much deviancy).

As Dr. Jekyll, he is kind, plays the piano proficiently, and is something of a true romantic to his fiancee Muriel (Rose Hobart). He is also in a rush to get married despite the objections of his fiancee's father. Meanwhile Jekyll's obsession over the potion gets to be overbearing and yet he can't help himself but drink from it and loosen those Victorian mores. Danger lurks when he starts changing into Hyde without drinking the potion. Uh oh. Naturally this results in disaster and an intense, chaotic ending that goes way beyond anything you would find in a Universal Horror flick of the 1930's - this Hyde means business.

Director Rouben Mamoulian ("Queen Christina," "Becky Sharp") uses the camera very subjectively and it leaves you almost breathless from the start of the first sequence, shot as if from Dr. Jekyll's point-of-view and it is meant to be distracting (Note the use of "invisible" mirrors as the camera seems to face Jekyll head-on while he dresses in front of the mirror). Also noteworthy are shots, unusual for a horror flick or any flick at that time, where characters seems to be speaking directly to us (a visual motif later used by director Jonathan Demme). Sometimes Dr. Jekyll seems to break the fourth wall when things don't go his way, as if he looks at us wondering if we are thinking the same thing. This technique helps to build sympathy for Dr. Jekyll's plight and we hope he can survive his transformative ordeal, though we know he can't.

Ultimately Fredric March is amazing to watch in his performance as he shows gradations of both the good and evil nature of his psyche, giving us a character of color and depth as Dr. Jekyll and showing us a rampaging monster as Hyde - the latter of whom knows he has gone too far in his exploits especially in the abusive relationship with the mortified Ivy (Miriam Hopkins, truly stunning performance). This Jekyll and Hyde flick holds your attention and keeps you on the edge of your seat, unsure of what unspeakable horror is around the corner when Jekyll is trying to restrain his transformation. It is not just hopped up, frenetic entertainment designed to titillate - at times, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is genuinely terrifying.