PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

10 Laps To Go 1937

10 Laps To Go is the second film on the Go-Get-'em Haines DVD. It's from 1936 and it was directed by Elmer Clifton. William Bloecher wrote the story and Charles R Condon wrote the screenplay. It's got Rex Lease, Muriel Evans, Duncan Renaldo, Tom Moore, Marie Provost and Yakima Canutt in the cast. Some of you might remember Marie from the Nick Lowe song. She was a doggie's dinner. Duncan would get older and wind up playing The Cisco Kid on TV. Here everything's about racing, there's some melodrama with the characters concerning a race car motor and there's plenty of racing around and around. It's short and movies along. It was over before I knew it. It's only an hour and it's only average. I wouldn't need to watch it again, most likely.

Go Get-'em Haines 1936

Go-Get-'em Haines is a 1936 action picture with William Boyd. You might know him as Hopalong Cassidy. I recently picked up a set of all 66 Hopalong Cassidy films. I haven't started watching the set but I have already see some of Hopy's pictures. They're OK, pretty standard plots and action. I do like the Hopy character.

In Go-Get-'em Haines William plays a reporter called Haines. He follows his story onto an ocean liner that leaves before he can get off. There's a bit of mystery, some romance, a fight or two, but it's not much more than average. I gave it a 6, it's better than a 5 but not a whole lot more. George Wallace Sayle is the screenwriter. The only film, of his nearly 40, that I had heard of was The Man They Could Not Hang with Boris Karloff. That's a better film but George only wrote the story on that one. At the end of his career he wrote a couple of episodes of the TV series Hopalong Cassidy. 

Humanity And Paper Balloons 1937

I don't read many blogs anymore, they can suck a lot of time from your day, but I do read the Cagey Films Blog. I know the guy in Winnipeg who writes it and as the title might suggest, the blog features film reviews. Occasionally George mentions films I haven't seen and sometimes they're films I'm curious to see. I'm less interested in some of the dramas he posts about, that's just me. I will watch the occasional drama and I'm certainly more likely to watch a drama from a foreign country.

It's kind of rare for me to see a Japanese film from before WW2 and George's recent post on Japanese director Sadao Yamanaka sent me looking for the 3 films that are still available. They're all available on DVD but I checked on YouTube to see if I could see them right now. All are available with subtitles in copies that are watchable.

Humanity And Paper Balloons was the first one that I watched. The screenplay is by Shintaro Mimura and it's based on his play. It's the last film for director Sadao Yamanaka. Here's a bit from the IMDb Trivia Page.

The film's pessimistic tone offended the censors to the extent that the director lost his military exemption permit. Drafted as a common private the very day "Humanity and Paper Balloons" was released, Yamanaka died from dysentery in Manchuria a year later, aged 28.

It's a pretty sad story, set in an 18th century slum. A Ronin and a Hairdresser cross paths and go down in flames. It's a good reminder that feudal Japan sure sucked. I guess, it wasn't much better in 1937 either. Plenty of pointless deaths, all around.

The Ronin and the Hairdresser get mixed up with the local gang boss and his thugs. The hairdresser runs a gambling shop without tipping the boss. The Ronin is looking to see the boss and give him a letter. The Ronin's father knew the boss and the Ronin hopes to get a job with the letter. The Boss snubs him. The conflict grows worse and things get pretty dire for our main two guys. There's a lot of that sort of story element in samurai films. In the Zatoichi films he runs into citizens being oppressed by the local head man all the time. Plenty of small town boss's need killing in feudal Japan. They sure make life miserable for everyone. A good message to be learned.

I enjoyed it but I like these dire films set in feudal Japan. It's a drama but it's also a crime movie. You've got a local small time criminal and an honest guy who's pushed to his limit, up against the local crime boss. How often have you seen that?

The Return Of Casey Jones 1933

The Return Of Casey Jones is a 1933 railroad based drama. Charles Starrett plays Jim, then the movie starts we see Jim as a young boy. His friend the train engineer is killed and Jim grows up to work as a train engineer. A train wreck wrecks Jim's career and brands him a coward, though the viewers know that Jim tried to save the train. The rest of the movie works hard to show everyone that Jim isn't a coward and get him his old job back. It was alright, nothing special. Gabby Hays is in the cast, he's somewhat fun to watch.