Returning from the war front, Captain Phoebe Plunkett accepts an assignment to apprehend jewel smugglers in pursuit of the Sultana diamond. On his mission, he meets Patricia Melton, who introduces herself as a French Secret Service agent also in search of the diamond.
If Duds feels like a velvet-gloved slap, that is because it is: a 1919 gauntlet hurled at audiences still dizzy from wartime rationals and Spanish-flu jitters. The film’s very title—slang for “clothes” but also for “failures”—already winks at the porous membrane between finery and fraudulence. What unfolds across its ...
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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.
Thomas R. Mills
Thomas R. Mills
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" If Duds feels like a velvet-gloved slap, that is because it is: a 1919 gauntlet hurled at audiences still dizzy from wartime rationals and Spanish-flu jitters. The film’s very title—slang for “clothes” but also for “failures”—already winks at the porous membrane between finery and fraudulence. What unfolds across its six crackling reels is less a detective yarn than an existential striptease, each scene peeling another layer of identity until the soul stands shivering under the projector’s carb..."
Henry C. Rowland, Harvey F. Thew
United States
