Tuesday 8 January 2019

Don't Take It To Heart! (1944 Jeffrey Dell & scr)

Begins with a high speed bus ride, driven by Beat the Devil's Ivor Barnard (whilst eating his lunch). Soon we're in the madcap manor of Lord Chaunduyt (the pronunciation of which is in itself a joke) overseen by Befni O'Rourke. He has good repartee with butler Edward Rigby, who not only has to put on his coat to answer the phone, but his glasses, and whose little run/walks through the house are accompanied by the cheerful orchestrations of Mischa Spolianksy (whose family had to flee Russia in 1905, then Germany in 1933. He was a prodigious conductor and one his pieces of music appears in the soundtrack of Magic in the Moonlight).

Then along comes Richard Greene and the Lord's daughter Patricia Medina, and a ghost (Richard Bird, who also plays the Lord's brother), who doesn't participate as much as other ghosts in films, but has an amusing way of running away scared of things. So all in all it's a cheerful and humorous diversion, with other stalwarts like Amy Veness, Patric Curwen, Joan Hickson, Esma Cannon (not annoying today, thankfully), Moore Marriott (I'm pretending to know who all these people are, really) and good old Ernest Thesiger.

Rare, and unfortunately only available in Dodge-O-Vision.


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