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Indie exploitation laced with intriguing surprises
14 December 2001
Real life athelete Herman Brix stars as an Olympic hopeful, rigorously trained by his father (silent star Monte Blue). They train at a camp run by former silent star Kenneth Harlan, who has a marvelously modern daughter (very young Joan Fontaine) who can scarcely contain her attraction to the fit Mr. Brix. Enter two carloads of rich young things, and the athelete's life becomes complicated by all the temptations that the fast life has to offer. Aside from exciting track and field event footage, the picture is a series of "getting even" schemes, lead by the unusual combination of future forties girl Suzanne Kaarn and a clotheshorse turn by former Arrow Collar man-silent "B" action star, Reed Howes. The glory of this film is noticing that Mr. Howes, always a star so long as he kept moving, does all of his own stunt work, which in this film includes keeping up with Mr. Brix, a professional athelete some 8 years his junior, not only on the field and in a series of jumps and breathtaking javelin lunges, but also in an extended fight scene during which the panting Miss Fontaine locks herself inside the tennis courts with the battling duo. Mr. Howes, one of the best looking men of the 1920s, still looks terrific, if a bit stiff in his talking sequences, and reminds one at times of the Donna Reed Show's Carl Betz. Monte Blue does his usual good work. Mr. Brix isn't bad, but the camera hasn't settled on that face as of yet, while Fontaine gives more hints of her future worth than could be found in any of her early RKO vehicles.
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