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I had a brilliant idea today.
I was getting so desperate about the amount of backlogged research typing-up/indexing that I now have to do that I was actually considering paying someone to sit down and do it for me.
Then it occurred to me: why don't I pay myself? Buy myself something I like, every time I actually get a batch done? :-) That way I get to benefit from the money as well as from the work...
Of course, I haven't actually done any yet. But I do feel a whole lot better about it!
Next task: I really must get round to writing up a review for The Way of the Strong - not least because I can't forget it (or even stop fan-ficcing it!), but partly because F.Gwynplaine MacIntyre seems to have been at his wicked ways with it... I wonder what the odds are that he never actually saw the film? The fact that he calls the villain "Tiger Louie" (the original name of record) rather than "Denver Louie", the name on the actual restored print, is suggestive — but possibly it was only changed in the course of the recent restoration work, which post-dates F.Gwynplaine's IMDb review.
(Isn't 'Handsome' Williams wonderfully ugly, poor man? I had a look around for some photos of the actor out of character (Masquers' Club, Silent Ladies & Gents) and while easily recognisable, it's clear that Mitchell Lewis was nothing like as ugly in real life as the unfortunate Handsome — he doesn't have a broken nose, for a start — so that's another unreliable assertion from the well-known Mr MacIntyre.)
Other dubious statements (N.B. spoilers!):
I was getting so desperate about the amount of backlogged research typing-up/indexing that I now have to do that I was actually considering paying someone to sit down and do it for me.
Then it occurred to me: why don't I pay myself? Buy myself something I like, every time I actually get a batch done? :-) That way I get to benefit from the money as well as from the work...
Of course, I haven't actually done any yet. But I do feel a whole lot better about it!
Next task: I really must get round to writing up a review for The Way of the Strong - not least because I can't forget it (or even stop fan-ficcing it!), but partly because F.Gwynplaine MacIntyre seems to have been at his wicked ways with it... I wonder what the odds are that he never actually saw the film? The fact that he calls the villain "Tiger Louie" (the original name of record) rather than "Denver Louie", the name on the actual restored print, is suggestive — but possibly it was only changed in the course of the recent restoration work, which post-dates F.Gwynplaine's IMDb review.
(Isn't 'Handsome' Williams wonderfully ugly, poor man? I had a look around for some photos of the actor out of character (Masquers' Club, Silent Ladies & Gents) and while easily recognisable, it's clear that Mitchell Lewis was nothing like as ugly in real life as the unfortunate Handsome — he doesn't have a broken nose, for a start — so that's another unreliable assertion from the well-known Mr MacIntyre.)
Other dubious statements (N.B. spoilers!):
- I'm probably far too innocent to spot such things, but I didn't get any impression that Handsome has sexual designs on Nora — beyond the fact that he is obviously falling in love with her. That certainly doesn't appear to be his initial motivation. Louie's intentions, on the other hand, are quite unmistakeable...
- Handsome doesn't have a mansion or a bootlegging empire — Louie does. (As so often in the past, I strongly suspect that F.Gwynplaine is extrapolating from stills and getting it wrong.) Handsome has what is probably a speakeasy, which he stocks with liquor stolen from bootleggers, and apparently lives in a couple of rooms 'above the shop', with a getaway staircase into the street. It's a comfortable and well-furnished existence, but the mansion seen in the film is in fact the hideout for Louie's gang and nothing to do with Handsome.
- Williams (probably) doesn't end up drowning. He shoots himself at the wheel of his car, in the belief that he is so ugly that even a blind girl cannot love him; the car proceeds erratically and finally takes the traditional plunge over the edge of a cliff, in this case into a river. Handsome is quite probably already dead by this point — but I'll bet that our phantom reviewer saw a still of the scene where the bubbles are rising from the sunken car, and assumes that this was the intended method of the driver's self-destruction...
- The statement that the final shot resembles "The Phantom of the Opera" puzzles me (I believe it's the bubbles rising as mentioned above), but I don't recall the "Phantom" accurately enough to state for certain that it doesn't end on a shot of the Phantom's coach in the river. The fates of the drivers, of course, are rather dissimilar.
- Williams and his henchmen do not defend their mansion with elaborate machine-guns mounted on the staircases, so the audience can scarcely have laughed at them. There is, however, a scene in which Louie (minus his henchmen) drags out from an upstairs room the machine-gun and shield he was seen using in a drive-by shooting earlier in the film, and starts shooting down the stairs: no-one laughed at this in the screening I saw, but if we give Mr MacIntyre the benefit of the doubt it is possible that, in addition to confusing the ownership of the mansion, he also made a slip of the pen in naming the gunner in question. Frankly I think that he saw a still of this scene and guessed falsely at the identity of the man behind the shield, but I could be wrong. It is possible to make that sort of basic mistake as to identities and ownership: I know because I did it myself when reviewing "Flesh and the Devil", despite loving the film (long since corrected!)...
