The Crooked Circle

I'm looking forward to seeing Zasu Pitts and James Gleason together in two of the Hildegarde Withers mysteries soon. So I thought I would try this first to see how the two actors gel together. James Gleason plays a policeman of lower rank in this than he does in the Hildegarde Withers series. At one point he comes out with the line "I ain't afraid of no ghosts" in such a similar way as Ray Jr Parker does it in his song for 'Ghostbusters' 52 years later.

This is a story of good versus evil gang warfare. The good are a bunch of amateur criminologists known as The Sphinx Club while the bad go by the name of The Crooked Circle. The baddies convene clothed in black hoods and robes in a cellar. One of their gang is a woman who draws the skull card when they are drawing lots to see who will perpetrate their avenging act on a member of The Sphinx Club.

Colonel Walters of The Sphinx Club receives a cryptic diagram message from which he gathers his life is in danger. There is a new Sphinx convert known as Yoganda who mysteriously foretells there is danger from a string. But like some other characters in the film it's difficult to tell whose side he is really on. At one point he is seen furtively sending a Morse coded message on the telephone while at a Sphinx gathering.

A lot of this film takes place at Melody Manor where a ghostly violin can be heard being played and also the ominous sound of a clock that strikes thirteen at midnight when "evil is on the way." This is an interesting lighthearted mystery and I'm pleased to say that Zasu Pitts and James Gleason do actually gel together well in this.

If you've never experienced the thing that is Zasu Pitts, here is a Zasu zinger! In 1933 Mae Questel caricatured Pitt's voice for the character Olive Oyl for the Fleischer Studios animated cartoon version of the comic strip Popeye. Zasu (pronounced Zay-Sue) does her best "Olive Oyl" impersonation walking around whining and ringing her hands or attaching herself to the policeman's laynard. I kept waiting for her to say "ohhh myyyy", but instead it's "something always happens to somebody." The first time I saw this film I loved Zasu and found her character really funny. I've since seen her in other films where she does this same whining, uptight, fragile-flower routine. So, upon watching this film again I started getting a little annoyed with the constant whining and near hysteria over a piece of dust. But, there are some funny comedy bits here, and it's also a mystery movie as well. It's an interesting mix of mystery and comedy that actually works. The mystery plot holds together well through the camp of Zasu Pitts and James Gleason who plays Arthur Crimmer the policeman. The haunted House is fun with many a secret passage and even a skeleton in the attic! Well worth the watch. Read more public domain movie reviews at: http://pdmoviereview.blogspot.com/

The Crooked Circle is a crime organization that meets in a dark room. All the members wear hoods. The group has one female member. They do not like the Sphinx Club, which is a local amateur crime fighting organization that is adding one new member because of the retirement of another. --Okay, if that makes sense so far then the rest of the film will, too.

Over in the old dark house, Zasu Pitts is spooked from the first moment we see her, and that's before the real action of The Crooked Circle has even started. Soon police officer James Gleason arrives, and Zasu spends the remainder of the picture clinging to various pieces of his uniform, much to his annoyance. They make a cute couple.

Other club members—who all end up assembled at the house, of course—include Berton Churchill as a jovial host who thinks it's amusing that the Circle has vowed to kill him; Rosco Karns, who manages a few wisecracks; and C. Henry Gordon as "Yoganda," a mystic of sorts who has just joined the group, claims to have insight to future events, and may or may not be an infiltrator from the other side. Ben Lyon and Irene Purcell are the obligatory handsome young couple who are both—in different ways—deeply involved in the case.

It's totally silly, but plenty of fun.

1930's comedy mystery about "The Crooked Circle" a band of hooded crooks who set about plotting the murder of some one who swore to oppose them. Enjoyable but really unremarkable little film, the movie works simply because the cast headed by Zazu Pitts and James Gleason (both of whom would later appear together in a couple of Hildegarde Withers films after Edna Mae Oliver dropped out of that series) and supported by a great cast of actors and actresses you know but may not know the name of (I don't hence the lack naming). A breezy hour long romp, the movie doesn't make a great deal of sense with mistaken identity, secret passages, ghostly music and people not being who they seem. Its the perfect thing for a dark and stormy night or a late night viewing when one is nostalgic for the late late show.

By 1930, film was already a living, breathing organism that was manipulating artists and audiences in its quest to survive and grow. From 1932 to 1938, that organism tried a number of potential branches of evolution before settling on one main one. But during that period, many experiments can be viewed, experiments that did not blossom and quickly became extinct.

Sadly, this exemplifies one of them and it is such a perfect example, such a pure specimen, it really must be seen if only for history. I'm increasingly convinced that we cannot be fully in the film experience until we have shared in some of its failed attempts.

What characterizes this is extreme abstraction. The basis is the detective story, a basis that is so strong in narrative appeal it survives today as the root of most film. But this experiment abstracts it extremely.

The bad guys are not just bad, but have a club. The good guys are not just good and smart, but they have a club too. The two clubs are at war, mostly it seems because that's what two groups do: define the other as the enemy and adopt roles accordingly.

The setting is abstract too: a "haunted" mansion with trap doors, secret passages, resident hunchback, disembodied music, skeletons (that predictably catch on the girl's dress) and blackouts. There's a very, very clever twist in the story too, one you know is there but you just can't pin down until it happens.

Zazu Pitts does a spooked housekeeper whose voice would be appropriated for Olive Oyl who would make her first appearance the following year.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.