Even an escape-artist can still fail at escaping from a failed film project. After a few films under his belt (check them out, won't you?), Houdini had his own idea for a film. It would be grand and elegant. To make sure it happened his way, he founded the Houdini Picture Corporation to Produce it. Unfortunately, reviews and reception to the film were not kind & the film actually lost money. Ain't that just a punch in the stomach?!? Seriously though, what was so different about this film than his other ones. The plot is certainly different, attempting a bigger scale and grandeur than most films from this Early Era. Was the film too good for its time or just not that good to begin with? Let's find out for ourselves as we thaw out...
* A pair of men go out exploring the Arctic. Thankfully, they brought along their pretentious title cards...
* Oh, hi Captain America. Wait- you weren't frozen yet...or probably born either. Who's this schmuck?
* I guess after being frozen in ice for 100 years, regular cold is nothing to our hero. Time to head home...
* I'm sorry, but you look just like my wife. This wouldn't have happened if the guys who thawed me out had told me that I was trapped in ice for 100 years, but, oh well...
* Shockingly, the guy that interrupts a wedding and says that his bride is there gets locked up in a Sanitarium. Of course, this is Houdini so escape is inevitable...
* Don't worry- after saving her life, Houdini gets the girl. No, it's not creepy that I look just like your dead wife at all. I love you! The End.
I was frozen today! The plot of this movie is just kind of silly. It's a love story involving a man frozen in ice and a woman who wasn't even alive when that happened! It's not terrible or anything- just weird. In theory, this could work. If they had made the time-gap shorter, that might have worked. Say, for example, he was frozen in ice for ten years. During that time, his fiancée died of a disease/car accident & he ends up with her sister or something. Ultimately though, the premise is oddly-mixed with an escape scene, the exploration scene in the beginning and the river rescue scene. It just doesn't feel like the same movie. All I can guess is that Houdini wanted to film a set of scenes and was required to work a romance plot into it. Either that or he tried to make a romance film and was required to work in those action scenes. Either way, the whole thing feels like a mish-mash of genres & just did not work in its own time. Today, it's still kind of weird. It's still a movie starring a famous magician. If you don't like these films, you're pretty much stuck with Terror Train. Take us away, oddly-green scene...
Next up, Kino International gives us one final film. This one is a rare piece of foreign cinema involving murder, bank robberies and...a robot. Stay tuned...
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