Word: plot
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...Chanin they were $2.75 and the list of enthusiasts had grown to include Leopold Stokowski, Lawrence Tibbett, George Gershwin, Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Carl Van Doren. "One of the most exciting shows in town," critics were saying. But the songs and dances make it so. Kykunkor's plot is slender. It tells of an African villager who chooses a bride, succumbs to the evil magic of another less comely party ("the witch woman"), lies unconscious until a witch doctor restores him. Three African drummers slap out the only accompaniment, sometimes weirdly soft, sometimes fiercely loud. Abdul Assen, the witch...
...Weismuller). Says Durante: "Beneath this here lion's cloth beats a heart that's seethin' with sentiment." Says Velez: "I'll bet you say that to every animal." Distressed, Durante uproots a tree, beats his chest, yodels through his nose. The picture also contains a plot in which Durante functions as an outdoor cinema star entertaining a visiting big game hunter (Jack Pearl). Durante hopes to use Pearl's lions in his next picture. Guests at the party (Charles Butterworth, Laurel & Hardy, Polly Moran, Frances Williams, Jack Pearl's neanderthal assistants) break eggs...
...cinema lacks the exciting detail, the intimacy of the book but neither book nor picture will help the police clear up the Rothstein murder. The picture's hero, Murray Golden (Spencer Tracy), might be any screen gambler from Hollywood. The plot, in which a rival underworld character grows jealous of Golden's success, and Golden's wife (Helen Twelvetrees) and mistress (Alice Faye) contest for his affections are standard cinema fictions. Nonetheless, Spencer Tracy's smooth, poker-faced performance and Edwin Burke's colorful direction give Now I'll Tell by Mrs. Arnold Rothstein...
...Frankenstein's Boris Karloff have been thrown together that two monsters are better than one does not work out in this instance. Displaying a remarkable lack of originality in terrorizing devices and effects, the picture is hardly one to make children scream and women faint. Even more important, the plot is so complicated and incoherent that all sense of sustained terrifying suspense is virtually lost. Two such master-monsters as Lugosi and Karloff deserve a better vehicle than "The Black Cat" when they meet to match wits...
...background of student music, the two horror merchants settle many long-standing scores concerning wars and wives. Panels slide, black cats stalk, mysterious servants silently do their masters' bidding, and strong wills vie with each other. The loosely connected story fails to give even a logical order to the plot, and the result is an unconvincing succession of almost unrelated incidents designed to strike terror to the hearts of men. Even the "black cat" has nothing to do with the general action, but is an extraneous importation from Edgar Allan Poe, used only to give the piece a title...