ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 216, 12 August 1937, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

KOSY THEATRE. ‘THE SCOTLAND YARD MYSTERY.” An atmosphere of intense thrill and mystery is created in a powerful detective melodrama now screening at the Kosy Theatre. Entitled “Tile Scotland Yard Mystery,” it deals with the exposure of a tremendous lile insurance ramp by the Chief Inspector ot Scotland Yard, and, entailing a continuous train of intensely gripping incidents and gruesome moments, including scones in a graveyard and an undertaker’s, cannot possibly leave anything to be desired on the score of sensationalism, oven by the most devoted lovers of sheer mlodiama. The development of the story turns on the complaints of an insurance company that several heavily insured people have, within a short period, died of heart failure, altnough previously certified os fit the company’s medical adviser. The Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard taeks a hand, and finds that the whole tiling is an outrageous swiiidlo, conducted by none othei than tho Borne Olfico pathologist. This man has discovered a serum which, when injected, produces a stale of living death —tile fate of his vicfiniß, for whoso bodies books are substituted on burial, whilst the men are revived with an anti toxin and sent abroad with a share of tho insurance money. A tense climax shows how tho villain is forced to use the antitoxin on tho inspector s daughter, whom he has Kidnapped and injected with the serum, and now lie 13 finally caught _ ir. tho trap of his own fiendish invention alter injecting himself lo avoid (tie police. The late Sir Gerald Du Mourier, whose recent death deprived tho world of one of its greatest actors, gives in his final film a polished ncrformanco as the Scotland Yard Inspector. “TRANSATLANTIC MERRY-GO-ROUND.”

“Transatlantic Morry-Go-Round” is a pleasure cruise of mirth and melody which is now showing at the Kosy Theatre.

MAYFAIR THEATRE. “WHEN THIEF MEETS‘THIEF.” The British film, “When Thief Meets Thief,” which is screening to-night at the Mayfair Theatre, is deserving of considerable attention by those people who like their stories to be exciting, unusual, and filled with incident. Indeed, the only real complaint that can be made against this United Artists’ picture is that tho plot tends occasionally lo become obscured by too much action and change of sc-enc, but on the whole the continuity is tighter and the direction crisper than in the average British film. Nor has there been counting of cost on the production side. The star is Douglas Fairbanks, junr., a young man whose popularity has suffered from the sins of overacting remembered against his father, but who actually has few equals on the screen in roles demanding youth, vigour, and romantic bearing. Those who saw “The Amateur Gentleman’ should agree with this, and now 110 is equally at homo in a modern setting. Like “Raffles” and “The Last of Mrs Cheyney,” this is a story about amiable crooks. If such people existed in real life they would soon find themselves behind bars and there would bo few to mourn, but when they appear on the screen everyone wishes them the best of luck. So it is with young Fairbanks in his portrayal of a handsome rum-runner, safe-cracker, and cat-bur-glar, and with Valerie Hobson as a beautiful adventuress whose activities are more within tho law but scarcely less a menace to polito society. Romance enters the story when Fairbanks goes to take the girl’s jewels but steals her heart instead, but before this he has had exciting encounters with a black-mailing colleague (Allan Haig), and this unpleasant person returns later to furnish the film with several surprising twists and a rather ingeniously-contrived climax. All in ail, “When Thief Meets Thief” is melodrama well worth watching.