Director: S. Sylvan Simon
The last of Red Skelton’s Whistling trilogy, this installment involves the same formula as its predecessors but with distinctly higher production values. This time, The Fox (Skelton) finds himself the prime suspect in a murder investigation and is on the run from both the police and the mob while he tries to clear his name by finding the real killer. Whistling in Dixie upped the intensity of the first film by including a long suspense sequence involving a potential drowning, and that sense of high stakes action is replicated here with a very effective set piece that takes place in an elevator shaft. Furthermore, Skelton’s skills as a physical comedian are more pronounced than in the other installments, with director S. Sylvan Simon allowing more of the laughs to come from his bodily control than his one-liners–in the most memorable sequence, Skelton finds himself participating in a baseball game at Ebbets Field while in disguise as a pitcher. Ann Rutherford and Rags Ragland deliver their dependably excellent performances, and Jean Rogers is amusing as a nasally reporter sidekick.
Director: S. Sylvan Simon
MGM found their answer to Bob Hope when Whistling in the Dark successfully made a star out of Red Skelton, and so it came as no surprise that a sequel would be rushed into production and released the following year. It’s a better film in nearly every way. Skelton once again plays “The Fox”, a radio personality who becomes wrapped up in a real-life murder mystery. Also returning are Ann Rutherford as the fiancee, who is solid but doesn’t get much of substance to do, and Rags Ragland in a dual performance as the thug he played in the first installment and his twin brother. Ragland steals the picture–he’s equally hilarious in two distinct performances. Although the twin gimmick is a familiar one (Laurel and Hardy found success with it in Our Relations), this picture does manage to get a lot of comic mileage out of the setup in a chaotic brawl in the climax. There’s also a memorable set piece (albeit a familiar one) in which Skelton and the gang are trapped in a room that is slowly filling with water. As in Hope’s best vehicles of the time, the delicate balance between suspense and humor is handled beautifully. Director S. Sylvan Simon doesn’t underplay the severity of the danger his characters find themselves in, and even when the wisecracks are coming he stages it as if it were a serious action picture.
Filed under: Reviews | Tags: 1941, s. sylvan simon, whistling in the dark
Director: S. Sylvan Simon
Comedians in genre pictures were all the rage in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Bob Hope had become a star due to his performances in the comedy horror pictures The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers, and Abbott & Costello also had their first dalliance with the horror genre in Hold That Ghost in 1941. A bit player in pictures for RKO and in Vitaphone shorts, Red Skelton was signed by MGM and given the vehicle meant to make him a star–Whistling in the Dark, a comic thriller that allowed him the opportunity to make wisecracks in-between his comical displays of cowardice. Like Hope’s horror pictures, Skelton plays an unlikely hero who finds himself surrounded by menacing villains in a spooky house (why things such as apparently mummified corpses appear in this particular narrative is anyone’s guess). It’s not quite as funny or suspenseful as it might be in other hands, but there are the occasional funny set pieces. Conrad Veidt plays a flamboyant cult leader who forcibly enlists the help of Skelton, a radio entertainer, to help concoct the perfect murder. Improbable as it might be, it’s amusing to see Skelton do his best to outsmart the crooks, including the terrific Rags Ragland as an intimating goon who is all too easy to fool.
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