Blue Bottles (1928)

It's not often that you see Elsa Lanchester (or is it Manchester, or Lancashire?) top the bill whilst Charles Laughton languishes mid-table, but that she does in this slapstick comedy. She just happens to pass a building where just moments earlier, we have seen a group of stripey-clad criminals capture a curious police officer. In the fracas, he has dropped his whistle. She blows it, and next thing there's a full scale street battle going on between the arriving constabulary and the holed-up nasties. Terrified - with that big-eyed look that she mastered so well, the young woman is trying to keep from getting shot, or taken hostage or just trampled to death in the mêlée. Who will win? Can she make it out alive? I doubt even now the Metropolitan Police is as heavily armed as these London bobbies appear to be in this light-hearted short feature and Laughton's low billing is explained by his blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance as a gun toting burglar who, luckily, isn't much of a shot. It's not especially original, and the direction (and editing) are a bit on the ropey side, but it's still quite an entertaining little romp that allows it's star to use her expressive face to full effect as the place slowly gets trashed. Might PC "Spiffkins" be the man of her dreams? Hmmm!