AMUSEMENTS.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 311, 17 December 1936, Page 8

AMUSEMENTS.

Plaza Theatre. Realistic power is the keynote of “The Prisoner of Shark Island,” showing at the Plaza on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week. Telling the true story of Dr Samuel Alexander Mudd, the man who was unjustly imprisoned as one of .the Lincoln conspirators, the new picture is an amazing document of man’s inhumanity to man. Warner Baxter, the star, plays the title role of the gentle backwoods physician who was sacrificed to a nation’s fren/.y in the furore (t-hat followed the asssassination. Many of the actual conspirators are executed, but Baxter is saved for a more terrible fate- —life imprisonment on the hellish Shark Island! Degrade!!, tortured, frantic with worry over his wife, Gloria Stualrt, and their child, he attempts an escape through the shark-filled prison moat. Fie wins his freedom in one of the most harrowing scenes of the picture, only to be recaptured.

King’s Theatre. Rafael Sabatini used the thrilling days of the French Revolution as a background for his great' love story, “The Nuptials of Gorbal,” which Capitol Films have now translated 'to the living screen under the title of “The Marriage of Corbal.” Directed by’ Carl Grune this Sabatini story will be screened at .the Stratford King’s Theatre finally to-night.

The big cast is heated by Nils Aster in the role of Deputy-Citizen Varennes, an unscrupulous young man who becomes fascinated with one of the condemned prisoners and rescues .the young aristocrat almost from under the guillotine’s blade. She is rescued by the Marquis of Corbal. Varennes locates Cleonie and issues an order that every unmarried aristocrat must marry a peasant within three days, an order calculated to dispose of Gorbal. To describe more of this thrilling screen story would spoil the delights in store. Hazel Terry gives a fine performance as Cleonie and Hugh Sinclair is the Marquis of Gorbal. The popular Noah Beery is also jn the cast. A police persecution complex is said to be the motive,, scientifically analy'sed, of the murderer “X” dire pivotal figure in the new Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer thriller, ‘‘Mystery of Mr X,” to open at .the King’s to-morrow.