Paularoc Review of Hyde Park Corner

Hyde Park Corner (1935)

Harker and Hale shine in this overly convoluted tale.

[7/10 · 11 September 2012]

I have long been a fan of Gordon Harker's movies but rarely get to see a good print of one as most of what I see are old video tapes. Thanks to Netflix, I got to see a good print of this one. Although I had never heard of Binnie Hale, I found her performance delightful and a perfect foil to Harker. That 's the good news. The bad news is the insufferably dull first 15 minutes or so of the movie. It may have been less time than that but seemed longer. An insipid and arrogant twit has been cheated at cards, forces a duel and is killed by the man who was cheating him. Twit's dying words were to place a curse on the house and on the family of the man who killed him. Flash forward 150 years and there we find Constable Cheatle, a descendant of the Bow Street Runner who witnessed The Twit's downfall. Cheatle (Harker) catches a shoplifter, Sophie (Hale) and proceeds to arrest her. She later eludes him and ends up at the house on Hyde Park Corner (where the aforementioned Twit died) and finds a murdered man who could have saved one of her lawyer's other clients. Come to find out, not only Cheatle but the murderer and the lawyer are all descendants of the main characters of the 18th c. card cheating and duel event. Too bad this "curse through the years" business was in the film at all and that some other supplemental storyline hadn't been used instead. Harker and Hale were great together and my favorite scenes were the courtroom one and when Sophie eluded Cheatle by going on the stage at a music hall. I liked this movie and hope that others will watch it - just remember that the price one must pay for watching some amusing bits is having to sit through a deadly dull introduction with its laughable duel.