Word: villainously
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...actors (who otherwise play their roles straight) have made a game of altering their lines if the crowd beats them to the draw. Thus the villain, when led away by the police, pauses to say "Foiled!" He was almost licked one night when the crowd shouted not only "Foiled!" but "Baffled!" "Beaten!" "Frustrated!" "Outwitted!" "Trapped!" "Flummoxed!" He waited until the wits were through, then hissed: "Stymied...
...people talk like stilted schoolmasters as well as windy poets : a businessman, for example, refers to gangsters as "banditti." Worst of all, Anderson cannot deal sharply with ideas. The conflict of ideas in Key Largo becomes swamped by emotionalism, ends as a philosophical melodrama where disillusionment is made the villain and idealism the hero...
...London (Universal) solves the problem of what to do next with a popular monster (Boris Karloff), who has already been deranged (The Lost Patrol), mummified (The Mummy), roasted alive (Frankenstein), resurrected (The Son of Frankenstein). Horror-man Karloff is now introduced to one of Hollywood's most accomplished villains (Basil Rathbone) in the cellars of the Tower of London circa 1480. There, amidst moaning victims, clanking chains and chopping blocks, Villain Rathbone (the crookbacked Richard, Duke of Gloucester) shows Monster Karloff (Mord, the club-footed constable of the Tower) how to satisfy an active homicidal mania by murdering...
...muddled playwright and an arty director, a not untalented cast was doomed from the start. Apparently assuming that twisted bodies mean twisted souls, they writhed like the Laocoon group. A revolutionary solemnly announced that only a small part of the human race have their heads cut off. The villain twitched about the stage like Mephistopheles with a tic. The audience half expected Fannie Brice to burst in, roll her eyes, and mutter as she did of yore: "It is always c-o-old in Roosia...
Capitalizing on recent interest in movie history, 20th Century Fox has delved back into the files and brought out two scenes of slap-stick that make modern movie comedy look like a first-class funeral. The first includes Buster Keaton, Alice Faye, an unnamed villain, and an apparently limitless supply of creamy custard pies. There is a certain emotional release about a custard pie flying through the air destined for some carefully made-up face. It is a shame that the idea has been abandoned, for many modern pictures might be livened up immeasurably with the sudden appearance...