Rating: C-
Dir: Phil Whitman
Star: Hedda Hopper, Marceline Day, Nick Stuart, Bryant Washburn
I’m not sure why or how this movie ended up on my YouTube watchlist. Yet, somehow, here we are. For it’s a fairly humdrum and cheap thriller, in which society lady Marian Radcliffe (Hopper) comes up with a scheme, alongside her lawyer, William Mortimer (Washburn) to stave off Radcliffe’s looming bankruptcy. One of Mortimer’s other clients, Ronald Stanhope (Stuart) is about to come into possession of a large diamond, which will become the property of his wife. Marian and William hatch a plan, after helping escaped convict Joan Lane (Day) evade the law, to marry Joan off to Ronald. Unfortunately, the couple fall in genuine love, causing Joan to have second thoughts about her role in the scam.
Hopper is likely the best thing about this, being manipulative and deceitful in a way that could only be permitted in the years before the Hays Code crippled Hollywood movies. Particularly malicious: she learns that Joan is actually innocent of the crime for which she was arrested, and keeps the information from her “niece” in order to maintain her hold over Joan. However, this backfires. Although Ronald does propose marriage to Joan, the shame of being considered a criminal causes her to decline the offer of marriage, much to the chagrin of Marian. She then has to apply the psychological screws to Joan, in order to change her mind and secure the coveted diamond. Though when semi-legitimate methods fail, there is always straightforward larceny.
The train-based motif is a somewhat interesting hook, I guess. We start off on one, which then suffers an unfortunate crash, allowing Joan to flee from custody, and Marian to get her claws into her. The finale also take place on the railroad, and I did like the way the makers put some effort into reproducing the environment of the train. There’s a constant rattle and rumble, and everything seems in a perpetual state of motion. It turns out that Marian is not the only, nor the most ruthless person after the gem, as a couple of gun-toting thugs prune a carriage off the rest of the train as part of their own plan to steal it. There’s a fist-fight on the back platform (above), which is fairly well-done, though the undercranked footage is painfully obvious.
It’s only in these final ten minutes that the film possesses the kind of energy to engage the viewer. Before that, there’s a lot more genteel chit-chat. You also need to ensure some particularly woeful attempts at “comic relief” featuring a pair of ill-suited newlyweds. The script also can’t be bothered to come up with a way to resolve things properly. It instead relies on a convenient “incident” – I’ll say more than that – which disposes of all the bad people, while leaving the good ones more or less unscathed. The poster, above, is likely the classiest thing about this, and you’ll have forgotten this as quickly as it’s 62 minutes have passed.