Cosy Theatre, Woodville

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 5, 7 January 1941, Page 2

Cosy Theatre, Woodville

Charles Laughton adds another brilliant characterisation to his career. Charles Laughton, remembered for his immortal Bligh in “ Mutiny on the Bounty,” for the delightful Ruggles in', “Ruggle of Red Gap,” and many other* brilliant roles in pictures. For Charles Laughton is one of tho most remarkable men of the films to-day. Make way now for Sir Humphrey Pengallan, squire of Cornwall, entertainer of the nobility, yet withal the evil geniuß behind the nefarious doings- of the gangs of wreckers who haunted the nearby coast, and adds another great characterisation to tho list of Charles Laughton. Here is a story of a lonely inn on the bleak Cornwall moors, not far from tho coast. Its name was evil, coaches whisked past and no man knew what horrors its everclosed shutters hid. Yet it was to Jamaica Inn that Mary Yellan went when her mother died, to join her aunt and tho man her aunt married, Joss Merlyn. The evils of the Inn, its dread secret, and the gatherings of the wreckers, she was all too soon to learn, to make her way in frenzied haste to Sir Humphrey for his protection. Littlo did she know ho was the evil genius who guided her uncle Joss and his band of cut-throats. Charles Laughton has the colourful, sinister part of the squire, the man behind the gang whose being is known only to Joss Merlyn. His strain of insanity gives room for expansive characterisation, and he makes •an enormously engrossing role of it. In support of Charles Laughton are Maureen O’Hara, beautiful newcomer to the screeen, Leslie Banks, Emlyn Williams, Mario Ney and others all under the expert direction of Alfred Hitchcock.

“Jamaica Inn” screens at the Cosy Tneatre, Woodville, to-night and tomorrow.