Todd’s Serial Blog

Many early sound serials are rough and uneven as the entire industry was adapting to the new technology, and as such probably should be given a pass on being compared to others made when all of the kinks had been worked out. Fair enough, but it doesn’t make things any easier when you’re trying to slog through one for a review. Sign of the Wolf (1931) is a one shot serial by poverty row Metropolitan Pictures featuring several big names from the silent era and an unusual beginning for a western, but is unable to overcome its shortcomings.

Rancher Farnum (Harry Todd) is on a trip to India, where he buys a small puppy that is supposedly a temple dog born with the Sign of the Wolf and has the ability to tell good people from bad. His real reason for being there is to purchase two links of chain that when dropped into heated sand will transform the sand into priceless gem stones.

What he doesn’t know is that the seller doesn’t actually have the chains, they are the possession of the Goddess of the Jewels Temple, which just happens to be the same temple the puppy is from. Once the deal is struck, the seller sneaks into the temple, shoots a guard and steals the chains. When the theft is discovered, disciple Prince Kuva (Edmond Cobb) is dispatched to return them.

Years pass and eventually Kuva traces Farnum to his ranch in the American Southwest. He then embarks on a campaign of harassment, sending notes via blowgun darts that demand the return of the chains or suffer their curse. Farnum, having had enough of that, decides to get rid of the chains and makes a deal with financer Winslow (Al Ferguson) to sell him the chains after a demonstration.

What Farnum doesn’t realize is that being a ruthless businessman, Winslow would rather go to the trouble and extra expense of stealing them than the more simple method of purchasing them outright. He hires local outlaw Butch (Jack Mower) to do the dirty work.

When Farnum’s daughter Ruth (Virginia Browne Faire) returns from out riding with neighboring rancher Tom (Rex Lease) and his partner Bud (Joe Bonomo), Farnum tells her is sending her to the city on the afternoon train to demonstrate the chains to Winslow. A little worried by her father’s erratic behavior, Ruth writes a note for Tom to meet her on the way to the station and sends it with King, the now grown up puppy.

When Farnum notifies Winslow of Ruth’s expected train arrival, he immediately contacts Butch, who sets up a plan to get the chains before Ruth gets to the station. Ruth drives for the station and comes upon Butch’s girlfriend Pearl (Josephine Hill) passed out in her car. When Ruth stops to see if the other woman is alright, Pearl jumps up, grabs Ruth’s purse and drives off. Ruth hops into her car and heads after her.

Tom, Bud and King witness this as they come over a rise and head off in pursuit of the two cars. Butch and his outlaw bunch have been in hiding and see Tom riding after the women and gallop off to stop the heroic ranchers. The two groups start exchanging gunfire. Meanwhile Pearl decides to get rid of Ruth and pulls a cord that starts massive clouds of smoke to come out of the back of her car. Blinded by the smoke, Ruth drives her car over a cliff…..

As an early thirties serial, the plot is fairly standard for a western, with the chains passing back and forth between good guys and bad guys for the first half of the serial, the second half concerns Farnum hiding the chains and drawing a map on King’s ear so that the outlaws have to come up with differing schemes to get the dog, and eventually finding out that when they do, that they can’t read the map. In an odd twist it turns out that only Kuva can read the map as it is written in his language. How Farnum was able to learn it is never brought up.

The supernatural powers of the dog mentioned in the first chapter are given short shift as even without these vaunted powers telling who the good guys and bad guys are isn’t that difficult. Chapter Eight does contain an interesting moment. Held prisoner by the gang, Kuva calls the Farnum house, asks to speak to King, when the receiver is put next to the dog’s ear, Kuva says two foreign words and the dog immediately high tails it for the gang’s up till that moment undiscovered hideout. That, that right there is camp in its purest form.

Of course that is nothing compared to the final wrap up. SPOILER ALERT!!! After Kuva is given back the chains, and they have to be freely returned as he is forbidden by his faith to take them by force, Kuva talks about all the suffering they cause, whips out a bottle of acid and destroys the chains in a big puff of smoke. To quote William F. Nolan on his assessment of John Carroll Daly from The Black Mask Boys, this serial “produced what may be termed as instant clichés”. Daly himself had used a similar ending to his first story Three Gun Terry back in 1923. And it was still being used years later as in Columbia’s The Vigilante (1947).

The acting is all pretty uneven as well. Former silent star Rex Lease hadn’t yet learned the subtlety of sound film acting and belts out his lines at top volume, making his quiet moments with Faire overly theatrical. Lease’s constant yelling of “Stick‘em up!” whenever he gets the drop on the bad guys eventually comes to seem like a running gag. Lease of course would eventually learn to tone it down and evolve into an effective character actor popping up in small parts in many of Republic’s serials during the forties.

Harry Todd is the worst of the bunch with his over the top histrionics as a man being slowly driven crazy gets on your nerves before the first chapter is over and he just gets more hyperactive and raving as the serial progresses. Virginia Browne Faire does little more than bounce back and forth between looking worried and screaming whenever the bad guys approach. As for Mower, he wears a black hat as the villain and that is pretty much his entire characterization.

But there are some good performances in the serial. Perennial bad guy Edmond Cobb does an effective job as the mysterious Prince Kuva. Though he spends most of his time skulking around the ranch house and sending cryptic notes, he maintains an aura of dignity throughout and his impassioned, heartfelt speech at the end is the only thing that makes the scene palatable.

Joe Bonomo is given few lines, but is still able to blow both Lease and Faire off the screen with his subtle, thoughtful reactions to events as they transpire. He actually looks like he is thinking whenever they have a quick cut to him during dialogue scenes. But the real reason he is in the serial is so that the barrel chested star can demonstrate his fame as the Strong Man of the Movies by picking a full grown man up and tossing him into the rest of the henchmen, or just holding him over his head with one hand while he battles opponents with his other during the many fights that populate the serial. As always he is a marvel to watch in action and it is sad that the husky actor never really clicked with audiences in the sound era.

But by far the best performance is by Al Ferguson in a bravura dual role. First up he is Winslow, the crooked rich man who hires the outlaw bunch. The Depression had made rich businessmen the perfect villain for audiences, but Ferguson forgoes playing the character as debonair and suave like Edwin Maxwell or John Davidson would have and instead plays Winslow like a Warner’s gangster, swaggering around his mansion and barking orders out through clenched teeth. He can barely bring himself to smile in an attempt to appear friendly toward the heroes the few times they come into contact, his smile resembling a rictus of pain when he first attempts to appear sympathetic when the chains are stolen during Ruth’s jewel making demonstration in Chapter Three.

In an odd bit of casting, with Winslow off screen a great deal due to his being in the city while most of the action takes place on the plains, Ferguson also appears as one the outlaw gang. Here he is a bearded and scruffy individual. Though he only has a few lines, and most of them in only one scene when he is tricking the heroine into revealing the whereabouts of King, he spends a lot of time in the back ground but exudes so much personality with his reactions to others’ lines that he stands out more than the perpetually glowering Mower.

The most interesting aspect of the serial is its recap method. Every episode will open with the Temple High Priest sitting in front of his crystal ball. A blow gun dart shatters it. The startled priest reaches in and pulls out a piece of paper, which describes what happened in the last episode. It is a clever and eerie bit that reminds viewers of the exotically mysterious opening section of the first chapter. If the serial had included more foreign intrigue like this and less repetitious western action (most of the action involves good guys chasing bad guys or bad guys chasing good guys as the chains pass back and forth between them) the serial might have been able to overcome the more hackneyed plot twists to be a more enjoyable viewing experience.

Tags: Reviews //