ENTERTAINMENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 9 January 1936, Page 9

ENTERTAINMENTS

“JOY RIDE” TO-MORROW AT MAJESTIC People who saw “Charlie Chan in Paris” yesterday at the Majestic can’t stop talking about it, and theatregoers will have their final opportunity to-night of witnessing the new exploits of “Chan” as tile film will move on to make way for a refreshingly hilarious comedy, “Joy Ride,” which commences a brief season of two days to-morrow. Never before has Charlie Chan been Seen' in a story with a plot so baffling, a .murderer more unpretentious, and an underground setting, more sinister, or an unmasking more sensational. Warner Oland gives his usual compelling performance as the Chinese detective “Chan,”' and once again those quaint proverbs of his delight his audiences. In “Joy Ride,” the worthy successor to that classic production, “My Wife’s Family,” Gene Gerrard scores a further triumph in this light-hearted screen play of the troubles and adventures of four, bright young things, two brothers and : their chorus girl sweethearts, who unfortunately derive their income from an aunt who believes that the stage and all those who perform on it are not worthy to receive the attention of herself or her nephews. This hilarious comedy entertainment, on Friday and Saturday, will be the final picture to be presented prior to the Majestic closing down for five days, from Monday to Friday, 13-17,th January, for re-decoration and re-open-jng with gala performance on Saturday, 18th January, of “Call of the Wild.”

“MAD LOVE,” TO-NIGHT’S REGENT ATTRACTION

Thrills and mystery are rampant, and laughs and romance play hide and seek with creepy chills and fantastic happenings in “Mad Love,” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s new drama of bewilderment which introduces an amazing personality to the screen in Fetor iLorjre, famous Continental character actor, screening at the Regent to-night and to-morrow afternoon and evening. In “Mad Love,” Lorre is seen as a physician yrho goes: mad and attempts to wreck the life and mind of a mail whose wife he covets. His victim is a pianist who loses his hands in a train accident. By means of an amazing surgical operation Lorre grafts on to this mail the hands of a decapitated knife-thrower, and thus infuses into him the desire to kill. The bizarre locales include the back-stage region of the horror theatre, with its strange “props” and effects, the theatre itself with its macabre trimmings, the weird clinic and surgery of the surgeon, with its fantastic lights, gleaming instruments and trappings, the forbidding street of the guillotine, and other surroundings in keeping with the strange story. Commencing at the matinee on Saturday one of the year’s best pictures for sheer comedy is to be presented in “Bright Lights,” starring that inimitable •comedian, Joe E. Brown. In “Bright Lights” ho gets away from his, straight comedy roles to go into burlesque and does some excellent work which will keep audiences rolling in their seats. His eccentric dancing, burlesque and mannerisms are entirely new to followers of his films, and they are legion, and in this vehicle he will assuredly delight them. THEATRE ROYAL: DOUBLE FEA= TURE PROGRAMME, TO-NIGHT Joan Lowell —“Adventure Girl,” which shows at the Theatre Royal tonight, depicts the. incredible happenings oil an expedition to the Spanish Main. Setting sail in a small craft, Joan Lowell was accompanied only by her 76-year-old father, Captain Nicholas Wag-

ner, and two sailors, Otto Siegler and Bill Sawyer, ex-Marines and soldiers of fortune. Captain Applejack, a canine mascot, completed the crew. In the film Joan is not long in finding the thrills she sought. Her boat, “Black Hawk,” all but sinks in a terrific storm off Cape Hatteras, during the course of which Joan had to lash her father to the wheel. A hurricane in the Caribbean brings vivid new dangers to the little party, and this is followed by a calm, signals for help to passing ships going unheeded, with the consequence that the adventurers suffer for days from thirst. Those who like their thrills, who expand to youthful love, and who delight in drama woven around football, should see com-edy-drama “Gridiron Flash,” with Eddie Quillan and Betty Furness. A babyfaced bank-robber and gangster, known as the “Cherub,” is pardoned for his crime and turned loose in a college, so that lie can play football for the good old Alma Mater! The story is comic, dramatic, and sentimental by turn. Eventually the “Cherub” falls for love and the college spirit, playing the final championship game like a hero. It is a lively narrative, staged in an intelligent fashion.