The Chaser

True story: whilst watching this film the other night, my ten-year old son said 'I've seen this movie'. In point of fact he hadn't, but the two of us HAD watched The Nuisance, the film this is based on, some months back. The Chaser is indeed an extremely close remake of the earlier film, and it's almost as good. Starring Dennis O'Keefe as ambulance chasing lawyer Tom Brandon, The Chaser also features Nat Pendleton in one of his typical 'lug with a heart of cold' roles, as well as Lewis Stone in a fine and bittersweet performance as an alcoholic MD who issues the appropriate diagnoses for Brandon's clients. The unlikely twosome dominate the film along with O'Keefe, with The Chaser's highlight being a marvelous scene where Pendleton and Stone examine poor John Qualen, here playing a suggestible Swedish beanpole named Lars. This film is clearly inferior to its progenitor only in the leading lady department, where an icy Ann Morriss replaced the more personable Madge Evans. All in all, a perfectly good way to spend 75 minutes on a cold, dark night.