REVIEWS of the NEW FILMS

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 37, 24 February 1939, Page 14

REVIEWS of the NEW FILMS

. Little Films Are Sometimes Best ["Hollywood Stadium Mystery." Re-public-BEF. Directed by David Howard. With Neil Hamilton, Evelyn Venable. Release date indefinite.] HE past few weeks have seen the arrival of an unusually large number of minor movies, destined almost certainly for positions on double-feature programmes, A regular swarm of B’s, in fact. However, it doesn’t mean that a film’s no good, just because it doesn’t show by itself at the largest theatre in town. In fact, so many of these little features are so competent and unobtrusively successful, and so many of the A-grade pictures are such pretentious failures, that at the moment one might say that some of the best things in life are B. Keeps You Awake ‘OR instance, there’s that Republic. film, "Hollywood Stadium Mystery." It’s not the kind of show you’d go far out of your way to see, and yet I doubt if anybody, coming across it on the first half of a double-feature programme, would feel like going to sleep while waiting, for the interval. Hnough happens in the first few minutes of this well-constructed little "whodunit" to keep one wide awake, and even if the action does fade off a bit toward the end, it never becomes stodgy. Rival Sleuths PRIZH-FIGHTER is ingeniously murdered while in the ring in the crowded Hollywood Stadium. One of those clever girl amateur detectives (no, not a girl reporter, but a writer of crime plays, which is the next best thing) has theories which conflict with those of the District Attorney, and they both put them to the test while all the likely criminals wait in the guarded stadium. The solving of the problem practically takes the form: of eliminating the suspects one by one. While this is going on the rival sleuths are bickering humorously together; but the wedding bells are ready to ring out in the final scene, Sufficient unto the story is the acting thereof, Evelyn Venable and Neil Hamilton being the pair who bandy wisecracks and clues.