Hiss and Yell (1946)

To be fair to Barbara Jo Allen here, she gives it all she has got as she tries to squeeze just about every mishap and misunderstanding into twenty minutes of light slapstick comedy. She’s “Vera” who thinks she saw magician “Bluebeard” (Barton Yarborough) get up to something especially macabre. He tells her that he’s just practicing for his stage-show, but she’s sceptical - to put it mildly. That nervousness isn’t improved when the two have to share a railway carriage and the magician’s taste for ghoulish delicacies only heightens her fears! What let’s this down is the really lacklustre writing which doesn’t really sustain the joke after the first five minutes, and leaves the enthusiastic Miss Allen exposed - despite her genuinely decent efforts to keep this moving along amiably. It can’t have had much budget as the production itself isn’t up to much but that needn’t have mattered in the end if director Jules White had focussed a little more on keeping it better from the realms of stage-bound farce.