QUEEN'S THEATRE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17527, 2 May 1925, Page 6

QUEEN'S THEATRE.

f "THE CYCLONE RIDER”—A . ? PICTURE OF THRILLS. “ The Cyclone Rider," a William Fox spectacular melodrama, which heads the new programme at the Queen’s Theatre, .commencing on Monday, was written bj- Lincoln J. Carter; author of some of the greatest melodramas seen on the American stage. “ The picture," says a reviewer, “ roars from one hairbreadth efscape to another, so that most of the time one needs hold both handles of .their seat in excited aifticipation of what will come next." It.starts off with a bang-—the crack of a revUlverr-and ends with wedding bells. In between lies not a dull moment. There is action, action, more action, swift love, intricate intrigue, high . voltage passion, hair-raising humour, hairbreadth escapes, diabolical villainy, plot after plot, and a riot of heart-throbs and romance. Reed Howes, as a structural steel worker, inventoi* of a racing carburettor and as the cyqlonic speed king of melodrama, “ does his stuff " well, and extends himself to the limit and the winning tape. Nose-diving on a swaying girder swung from the twentieth storey of a steel skeleton skyscraper, he makes one of the most daring, dizzy rescues ever screened. He is buried alive in a dynamited road tunnel. Sure-footed as a circus, acrobat, he walks a steel cable a hundred feet above the pavement! A hired cut-throat cuts one end: catching the cable as he falls, he swings through

mid-air like a trepeze artist, and miraculously crashes through a window into the home of the girl he loves just as her marriage is taking place to ihe double-faced villain favoured by her rich father. Tie dices with death, not once, but a dozen times. Alma Bennett, as the Only Girl in his cyclonic young life, goes the pace. William Bailey gets away convincingly with the difficult villain's part, and There are notable characterisations by Evelyn Brent as a woman of the underworld: Margaret M’Quade, the Cyclone Riders old mother; Frank Beal, as master builder ol skyscrapers and father of the girl; and Ben Deeley and < 'harles Conklin as side-splitting comic darkies. “The Cyclone Rider" is guaranteed good for a thrill a minute