Harold Bledsoe, a botany student, is called back home to San Francisco, where his late father had been police chief, to help investigate a crime wave in Chinatown.Harold Bledsoe, a botany student, is called back home to San Francisco, where his late father had been police chief, to help investigate a crime wave in Chinatown.Harold Bledsoe, a botany student, is called back home to San Francisco, where his late father had been police chief, to help investigate a crime wave in Chinatown.
Charles Middleton
- John Thorne aka The Dragon
- (as Chas. Middleton)
Will Walling
- Police Captain Walton
- (as William Walling)
Grady Sutton
- Man at Party (silent version)
- (scenes deleted)
Eddy Chandler
- Cop
- (uncredited)
Rae Daggett
- Woman Sitting in Police Station
- (uncredited)
Douglas Haig
- Buddy Lee
- (uncredited)
Edgar Kennedy
- SFPD Desk Sergeant
- (uncredited)
Tetsu Komai
- Florist Henchman
- (uncredited)
Wang Lee
- Chinaman with Queue
- (uncredited)
James B. Leong
- Florist Henchman
- (uncredited)
- …
Jim Mason
- Barry Steele
- (uncredited)
- …
Nelson McDowell
- 1st Train Passenger
- (uncredited)
Soo Hoo Sun
- Dead Chinese Man
- (uncredited)
James Wang
- Dr. Chang Gow
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaBegan shooting as a silent in August, 1928 at Metropolitan Studios, it would become an agonizingly long and complicated production. It was finally released on October 12, 1929 as a talkie after largely being re-shot with another director - Clyde Bruckman as a talkie (marking the first time Lloyd worked from a script) and painstakingly edited down from an original 16-reels (some 2 hours and forty-five minutes) to 12-reels. The silent version cost $521,000 and another $281,000 was spent on the sound negative. While the novelty of hearing Lloyd speak made it his largest grossing hit since The Freshman (1925), those steep production costs resulted in a huge drop in net profits from his earlier features.
- GoofsIn many of the dubbed scenes, the voices are out of synchronization with the actors' lip movements.
- Quotes
Billie Lee: I just put my foot in the wrong place.
Harold Bledsoe: Oh, you did. Well, if you do it again, I'll put my foot in the right place!
- Alternate versionsThere is an all-silent version of this film distributed to unwired cinemas which includes more of the original "silent" version and is adapted with inter-titles for the newer sound sequences.
- ConnectionsFeatured in American Masters: Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (1989)
Featured review
Harold Lloyd's first talkie is an uneasy transitional film between the silent and the sound era. It was originally made to be a silent, and it was re-written, and much of it was re-filmed in order to make it play. What would have been best for the movie would have been to cut out the fat. It goes on for far too long, just five minutes short of two hours, which must have been Lloyd's longest film. And I've read that the original cut was nearly three hours! I love Harold more than anybody, but two hours is a little too much. I couldn't even imagine a longer version. It is a pretty good comedy, though. There are a handful of brilliant comedy bits, and Harold Lloyd, more so than either Keaton or Chaplin, was just as good in his talkies as he was in his silents. There's also a lot of brutal slapstick. That was always a part of Lloyd's work, more than Keaton's or Chaplin's, but not even the Three Stooges are this violent! Harold must brain about thirty people. It is mostly funny I'll give him that credit but sometimes I had to give his enemies a sympathy `OUCH!' In the film's very funny finale, Lloyd fights a gigantic black man. To knock him out once and for all, Harold shoves his hand in one of those giant conch shells and clubs the guy on the head several times in a row. OUCH! 7/10.
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Der Drachentöter
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $979,828 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 53 minutes
- Color
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