With Will Rogers, Mickey Daniels, Our Gang, Noah Young, Leo Willis, Charley Chase.

Although probably an "economy" short, put together with chunks lifted from other "Our Gang" comedies, Jubilo Junior is rather an appealing little comedy. It has plenty of variety, and odd moments of quite touching pathos. Some gags are played for a little more than they're worth, and the hole-filling scene is a shameless plagiarism from Tom Sawyer, but on the whole it's quite a pleasing little work.

Supervising Director, F. Richard Jones; camera: Len Powers; 2 reels

Released by F.B.O. 6 reels

The second film produced by Houdini's own company (Houdini had announced he would be manager, author, editor, caption-writer, star and supervisory director, so we really do know who to blame, despite the lack of documentary evidence!), Haldane of the Secret Service was his last film venture. And frankly this film shows that be had no-one but himself to blame. Whatever his shortcomings as an actor or romantic lead, he must surely have known that an audience came to see a Houdini film for one reason only -- and to deny them the stunts and trick escapes that they expected is the height of inexplicable folly. True, Houdini's escapes never paid off as well on film as they did "live". Changes of angles, jump cuts and other editing frequently suggested suggested doubles or other cheats even where none were necessary. Even newsreel coverage of his stunts was often doctored, via jump cuts etc., to make the escapes less time-consuming for movie audiences. Nevertheless, with good directors and material, Houdini could have gotten by. The Grim Game, which we showed a few years ago, was an excellently done melodrama and the serial The Master Mystery had a lot of excitement to it. Even Houdini's other personal production, The Man From Beyond, had a whale of a climactic reel to make up for the absurd plotting. With more reliance on the writing and directorial skills of others, there seems no reason why Houdini shouldn't have duplicated at least the moderate success of, say, Richard Talmadge -- although probably "moderate" success wasn't what Houdini was interested in.

Perhaps because of its shortcomings Haldane is tremendous fun. Its overall impression is of the splicing together of all the out-takes from a hashish nightmare -- with all the juicy bits missing, but the incoherent insanity remaining. Or, taking another view, it's a bit like The Vampires with all the beauty and action removed. Houdini literally seems to have NO idea where the story is going, and to be making it up as it proceeds. Whenever he's stuck, he demands a full confession from some hapless character, who promptly replies with a "Well, back in Shanghai six months ago ----" and leads into a flashback that merely adds to the confusion. The overall chaos even spreads to the title writers, who within a single reel give two different addresses for the same Washington Square building, and although the action clearly takes place in 1923, which date is frequently given on letters, newspapers etc., they manage to have a London newspaper dated 1921. Although London is charmingly behind the times in many things, its newspapers are always up to date! Further adding to the curious mosaic is that the plot rambles from New York (nice shots of the harbor, Brooklyn Bridge etc.) to England and Paris. The street scenes of London, the Thames, Hull, Paris, and old trams in Glasgow are nostalgically superb and even valuable, but the different quality stock, camera speeds etc. indicate that they are lifts from Houdini's own extensive stock footage library, although one shot does seem to fit in with the plotting quite well, and indicates that Houdini, thinking ahead to his future features, probably shot ambiguous scenes that could later be cut in to fiction films.

Curiously, there are several situations which seem made to measure for Houdini's escape routines, but they are all shunted aside, and only the climactic escape from the giant water wheel is actually delivered. However, in plot and complications, if not in physical action, the film moves quickly, and is enhanced by some of the wildest titles we've seen in a long while. The poor Oriental gets quite a rough time of it in these florid onslaughts against the Yellow Peril, and there's one glorious moment when a seemingly unimprovable title, with everything crammed into it, is topped by a kind of one-liner postscript title, the fun of which we won't spoil by tipping it off. Incidentally, most of the characters speak quite slowly and deliberately, and it's fairly easy to lip read their remarks -- all of which seem appropriate to the action, but never seem to correspond with the titles that go with them.

With a little more coherence and traditional action, Haldane might have been something of a classic of wild and woolly Secret Agent fare. As it is, it is unwittingly still VERY diverting, and in this James Bond era, Houdini's dim-witted Haldane, forever "hiding" by holding his straw hat in front of his face, comes off as rather an amiable and lovable oaf. Whatever the new policies of the Museum of Modem Art under Mr. Van Dyke, we feel sure that future generations can claim that "only at the Huff" could films like Haldane of the Secret Service be seen in New York in the sixties.