Welcome Danger (1929)

Director:

Clyde Bruckman

Writers:

Paul Girard Smith (dialogue)
Felix Adler (story) ...

Release Date:

12 October 1929 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

For the First Time! Hear Harold Lloyd Talk

Plot:

Harold Bledsoe, a botany student, is called back home to San Francisco, where his late father had been police chief...

Plot Keywords:

Distraction | Darkness | Whore | Drugs | Tripping

Cast

Harold Lloyd	...	Harold Bledsoe
Barbara Kent	...	Billie Lee
Noah Young	...	Patrick Clancy SFPD
Charles Middleton	...	John Thorne / The Dragon
Will Walling	...	Captain Walton, SFPD 3rd Div. (as William Walling)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Grady Sutton	...	Man at party (silent version) (scenes deleted)

Runtime:

115 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Filming Locations:

Metropolitan Studios - 1040 N. Las Palmas Boulevard, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

The Harold Lloyd Corporation

Trivia:

Originally filmed as a silent feature (directed by Malcolm St. Clair) it was largely re-shot for sound release (directed by Clyde Bruckman). When it was previewed, it was over three hours in length, but cut to under two hours before general release.

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: In many of the dubbed scenes, the voices are out of synchronization with the actors' lip movements.

Movie Connections:

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

Soundtrack:

Billie

Too long, but still pretty entertaining

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 It was originally made to be a silent, and it was re-written, and much of it was re-filmed in order to make it play.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.