A DASHING ROMANCE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 740, 19 April 1933, Page 3

A DASHING ROMANCE.

“The Unholy Garden” Coming to Everybody’s.

•• prosperity,” starring Mavie Dressier ancl Polly Moran, will have its final screening at .Everj'body s Theatre on Friday night. „ „ . The motion picture public does not see enough of Ronald Colraan, and it would be interesting to study its reaction to a surfeit of his pictures. But it is in the happy position of a small bov who has a birthday—it has to be content with one at a time, and when that one is of the calibre of “The Unholy Garden,” which will begin a return season at Everybody’s Theatre on Saturdav it has no reason for anything but content. “ The Unholy Garden ” is the perfect answer to the demand for Ronald Col man in a picture of action. “ The Unholy Garden ” follows the formula, but is different from the lightness of “ The Devil to Pay ” and the drama of “ Beau Geste.” It has a little of both—action, into which the audience is flung headlong from the very start, and lightness, the familiar Colmanesque delicacy of touch in love, which makes all his pictures acceptable to the matter-of-fact and delightful to the romantic. Hidden in the decayed splendour of a once magnificent resort on the fringe of the Sahara desert is a strange gathering of outcasts from civilisation. Safe from the police and extradition, these renegades await forgetfulness or forgiveness. Into the midst of this thieves' kitchen comes Prince Charming in a stolen car, and accompanied by a beautiful baronne who is really a police spy. There is a conflict of wits, swift action in the darkness of the castle, a struggle for the old baron’s money and then Prince Charming—but it would spoil the ending to tell of it; sufficient to say that it ends with a rose. Recklessly dressed and recklessly minded, Colman shows that he can cast off the veneer of suavity which he formerly wore, and be dashing enough for anyone. Fay Wray makes an appealing Cinderella. Box plans at The Bristol.