‘CHINATOWN CHARLIE’

Evening Star, Issue 20053, 19 December 1928, Page 2

‘CHINATOWN CHARLIE ’

JOHHHIE HIKES IK BRIGHT COMEDY Johnnie Hines is undoubtedly one of the most popular comedians in the screen world, and hia latest contribution to the silver sheet., ‘ Chinatown Charlie,’ which will open at the Empire Theatre on Friday next, is considered the best of his career, San Francisco’s Chinatown has been transplanted to the screen, surely with a few silent, secretive mandarins hovering round, more chop sueys than are really there, and a variety of prowling, shifty-eyed Celestials all worrying the poor hero, stealing his girl, leading him a merry chase along dark alleys, into strange houses, confronting him with almond-eyed beauties and all the rest of what one expects of Johnnie Hines in Chinatown. In this picture Hines has taken a humorous slap at the underworld, always pictured in lurid colours, and bristling with bad men and vampish women. He has picked on Chinatown as the scene of hia actions, which, even in the midst of his love affairs and his melodramatic encounters with infuriated natives, is always diverting and originally humorous. Taken all in all, this ‘ Chinatown Charlie, ’ is as bright and breezy a comedy as this favourite player has produced for some time, and he is supported by a good cast, including Louise Lorraine and Anna May Wong. A thrilling melodrama of the Canadian Northwoods, witn more action, speed, dare-devil riding, and thrills than ever before, is ‘ Coda of the Scarlet,’ Ken Maynard’s latest Western feature, which is the second pictorial attraction. Ken has been < ailed the “ Ace of the action stars,” and ‘ Code of the Scarlet,’ a story of the Royal North-west Mounted Police, bears out this appellation, for he has never performed more stunts, or appeared to bettor advantage*.-