Sin-copation

Lloyd French spent about a decade working for Hal Roach, so when he went over to Warner Brothers and eventually wound up directing a lot of their Melody Masters short subjects, he brought an off-handed silliness to the entire operation. In this one, it's getting chilly in Hell, so the Devil, in a cheap and obvious costume, calls upon pianist and swing band leader Leon Navara for some heat.

I've never heard of Mr. Navara, but his playing is pretty good -- sweet, rather than hot and the version of "Hold That Tiger" his orchestra plays at the end is accompanied by a novelty dance act -- frenetic and funny rather than hot. The result is an entertaining entry to the series.

Sin-Copation (1938)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Satan returns home to Hell shocked to see that it's cooling off so he quickly gets on the phone with his agent and demands that he do something about it. The agent sends down Leon Navara and his Orchestra who are the "hottest" (get it?) thing going at the time. Sure enough Navara gets down there and even Satan is impressed with how hot they are. If you go through enough of these Warner shorts you'll notice that just about every type of storyline was at least tried once and this time we get Hell freezing over and needing some music to warm it up. That's a pretty good set-up and for the most part the short works, although I think it's fair to say that all the music numbers could have been a tad bit better. Navara mainly stays on the piano as his band members do everything else and while there isn't a number that really jumps out, they're all at least worth sitting through once. The film even lets Satan ask a few questions of Navara including why he wanted to mix in a piano with this orchestra band. One of the music numbers features some trick photography of a small band standing on Navara's piano as they perform.