A young botanist seems to WELCOME DANGER when he goes looking for a master criminal in San Francisco's Chinatown.
Silent screen star Harold Lloyd made his first excursion into talking films with this enjoyable comedy. Originally initiated as a silent movie, Harold -- ever the progressive -- became convinced of the lasting viability of sound films and had the picture completely revamped, at a cost of over a million dollars of his own money.
Some of the sequences are obviously dubbed-over silent footage, and the entire film shares a love of too-much-talk with other movies of the era. But the comedy is good and certainly on a par with any other sound pictures being produced at the time. One prolonged scene in particular, Harold's foray into the depths of Chinatown, replete with hidden passages, trapdoors and sliding panels, makes an excellent use of both sound & music, and shows that Lloyd was still on top of his game.
Barbara Kent makes a spunky love interest for Harold; she's cute & lively and it's impossible to understand how he could possibly mistake her for a boy. Charles Middleton is an effectively nasty villain; and it's good to see Noah Young, a familiar face from so many of Harold's silent films, here playing a dumb but loyal cop.
Movie mavens will recognize an unbilled Edgar Kennedy as a harassed desk sergeant.
Silent screen star Harold Lloyd made his first excursion into talking films with this enjoyable comedy. Originally initiated as a silent movie, Harold -- ever the progressive -- became convinced of the lasting viability of sound films and had the picture completely revamped, at a cost of over a million dollars of his own money.
Some of the sequences are obviously dubbed-over silent footage, and the entire film shares a love of too-much-talk with other movies of the era. But the comedy is good and certainly on a par with any other sound pictures being produced at the time. One prolonged scene in particular, Harold's foray into the depths of Chinatown, replete with hidden passages, trapdoors and sliding panels, makes an excellent use of both sound & music, and shows that Lloyd was still on top of his game.
Barbara Kent makes a spunky love interest for Harold; she's cute & lively and it's impossible to understand how he could possibly mistake her for a boy. Charles Middleton is an effectively nasty villain; and it's good to see Noah Young, a familiar face from so many of Harold's silent films, here playing a dumb but loyal cop.
Movie mavens will recognize an unbilled Edgar Kennedy as a harassed desk sergeant.