Welcome Danger

1929
Approved
1h 53m

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

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.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

5.9/10

842

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

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Harold Lloyd

Harold Bledsoe

Barbara Kent

Billie Lee

Noah Young

Officer Patrick Clancy

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)

Brooks Benedict

Handcuffed Prisoner at Police Station
(uncredited)

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

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Did you know

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Trivia
Began 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.

Goofs
In 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 versions
There 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.

Connections
Featured in American Masters: Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (1989)

Soundtracks
Billie
(uncredited)
Written by Lynn Cowan

User reviews29

Review

Featured review

6/10

Harold Lloyd makes an awkward entrance into talking pictures

Don't get me wrong, I love Harold Lloyd - both his talkies and silents. However, "Welcome Danger" was a real disappointment. It was Lloyd's first talking picture, started as a silent. When he finished he realized that sound had "arrived" and reshot it as a talking picture.

The awkwardness of the picture is no worse than any other early sound film, but the big problem is Harold's persona. As usual, he is the eager beaver trying to make good, but for some reason he makes his character out to be one of the most annoying personalities in film history. He is outright mean to people who really don't deserve it.

Lloyd plays Harold Bledsoe, a college student studying botany. His father is chief of police in San Francisco. After his father dies, Harold returns home to help the force with a crime wave in Chinatown. However, he becomes fascinated with fingerprint technology and soon has the department tied in knots with all of his cataloguing and fingerprinting. Soon the police department that welcomed him so heartily would do anything to get him out of their collective hair.

It is a shame this isn't on DVD because it is not THAT bad, and it is an important milestone in cinema history since it was Lloyd's very first talking picture. "Feet First" was his second talking effort, and a much better film too. One of the real treats of this film is an unbilled appearance by Edgar Kennedy as a desk sergeant in the San Francisco police department. He spends a long time on screen for him to have no credit whatsoever, but he does a wonderful job of playing the irascible beat cop we see in his later films.