This is the cinematic equivalent of that senile grandpa or great-aunt who blurts out racial epithets at Thanksgiving dinner and embarrasses the hell out of you in front of your date. Every ugly stereotype is on abundant display in this nasty bit of celluloid, whose target audience these days consists of willfully ignorant bigots, lightly retarded weasels and Don Imus fans.
As depicted by the popular (at the time) black face minstrel show duo, African-Americans are lazy, stupid, cowardly, speak comically broken English, and pine for them "good ol'days" of the racist Jim Crow south. We're also treated to a heap of cringingly racist "O lawdy lawdy, i'se a-fraid o' them spooks! Yahsuh!" sort of bigoted "humor" that would make anyone with the slightest sense of justice want to take a flamethrower to every print of this cinematic turd.
Melville Brown's deadpan direction does nothing to enhance Godsen & Correll's blackface minstrel show act. The non Amos and Andy dialog is so clunky and trite that even the actors who aren't in black face can't seem to take any of it seriously. Irene Rich and Edward Martindel, both respected veteran silent film actors, look lost and faintly embarrassed among the RKO B-listers trying to make something coherent of the film's sub-sub-par plot.
Many films of the 1920s and 30s were lost to history due to neglect. That this racist toad of a film survived when so many other, by far better, (or at least less cringingly racist) films perished is a fine example of the basic injustice of the universe. Not only is Check and Double Check a prime example of how not to make a movie - it's also stellar example of just how bad the "good ol' days" really were.
As depicted by the popular (at the time) black face minstrel show duo, African-Americans are lazy, stupid, cowardly, speak comically broken English, and pine for them "good ol'days" of the racist Jim Crow south. We're also treated to a heap of cringingly racist "O lawdy lawdy, i'se a-fraid o' them spooks! Yahsuh!" sort of bigoted "humor" that would make anyone with the slightest sense of justice want to take a flamethrower to every print of this cinematic turd.
Melville Brown's deadpan direction does nothing to enhance Godsen & Correll's blackface minstrel show act. The non Amos and Andy dialog is so clunky and trite that even the actors who aren't in black face can't seem to take any of it seriously. Irene Rich and Edward Martindel, both respected veteran silent film actors, look lost and faintly embarrassed among the RKO B-listers trying to make something coherent of the film's sub-sub-par plot.
Many films of the 1920s and 30s were lost to history due to neglect. That this racist toad of a film survived when so many other, by far better, (or at least less cringingly racist) films perished is a fine example of the basic injustice of the universe. Not only is Check and Double Check a prime example of how not to make a movie - it's also stellar example of just how bad the "good ol' days" really were.