Tangled Destinies (1932)

★★★ · Ripped from the pages of Aviation Crime Fiction Magazine! · Cine Cheater · 2012-02-05

A great pulp fiction story from the early 1930's. The sort of movie script that had its origins in the cheap newstand penny-a-word magazines of the day. ("Crime Busters" ..."Hollywood Detective"..."Clues Detective Stories" ..."Thrilling Adventures" ..."Black Mask" ..."Exciting Aviation Adventures" ..."Blue Book.") However, this movie is to be enjoyed for what it is, not for what it should be. Remember, this is a very low-budget movie at a time when money was scarce and when talking movies were still finding their way. See if you can spot actors talking into lamps. (Actually, the audio is…

★★★ · Tangled Destinies Untangled · Poohbah70 · 2019-08-16

A product of the 1930s, when "old dark House" mysteries were the rage. This is another variation on the theme, with an unusual and disparate cast of characters thrown together by virtue of being passengers on a flight that is forced to land in the desert 300 miles east of Los Angeles. There are the airplane pilots and stewardess, a parson, a Chinese man,a couple about to wed, a professor of mathematics, a boxer, an actress, an elderly lady and one or two more. And, there is an immaculate, uninhabited house in the desert in which they take refuge. After one of the party is murdered, the…

★★ · The Loose Ends Don't Hurt Much Here · rclo · 2011-04-20

The soundtrack during the credits is a loop, repeating the same airplane sound over and over. That speaks to the film's budget. However, kudos to the sound effects man, who knew that thunder follows lightning. Granny is played by a woman much younger than the character; she walks and moves like an athlete - suspicious?. The "Yellow Peril" syndrome automatically casts suspicion on our Chinese friend. The "MacGuffin" should be a secret, but lots of people seem to know something about it. It remains a secret how or why the culprit had any knowledge of it. One of many "loose ends." Lavender?!…

★★ · Product of its times? · Dark Moon · 2012-02-04

Filled with stereotypes, cliches, platitudes, and old slangy U.S. vernacular expressions not heard anymore, such as 'chief cook and bottle washer', 'grip' (luggage), 'chiseler' (dishonest, a cheat), and 'I'm so hungry, my stomach thinks my throat's cut'. The characters include a criminal attorney whose circumlocutions, hyperbole, and flowery phrases know no bounds; a retired boxer who is glad to be back on the ground, standing on "terra cotta"; a Chinaman who speaks broken and heavily accented, yet very formal English (the formality being his response to the thinly veiled hostility…