Thursday 18 January 2007

The Adventures of Kitty O'Day (1945)

The County Hotel seems like a pretty quiet place to be, with regulars coming there to be ensured of peaceful relaxation. I'm not sure how that could be, given that Kitty O'Day is working there as a receptionist. You can be sure that with Kitty O'Day on the premises, things won't stay quiet for long, and needless to say that five minutes in Mr Williams gets shot and she's on the call when it happens. Worse still, Mr Williams is the man who runs the County Hotel and of course Kitty is going to investigate.

There's nothing here that wasn't in the first Kitty O'Day movie, the previous year's Kitty O'Day, Detective. Jean Parker is still having a ball playing the title character and it's just as fun watching her interrupt everyone and finish everyone else's sentences. Peter Cookson is just as immobile as her boyfriend Johnny Jones and he's still better at being a Cary Grant waxwork than Cary Grant. He's not much of a sidekick in the slightest and his only real talent is to be easily ignored.

Tim O'Ryan was much better in the first film, as the continually flustered Inspector Clancy. He made a lot of movies, probably mostly with budgets like this one, so I'm sure he could do this sort of thing in his sleep, and here I think he does. He spends a good deal of time dealing with his idiot sidekick, who is nothing more than comic relief but at least is better than his equivalent in the first film. Most of the film works on about the same mental level but manages to get worse, degenerating into one of the most dumb chases I think I've ever seen on film. If anyone ever wonders why there were only two Kitty O'Day movies, just ask them to watch this one.

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