You Tell 'Em, Lions, I Roar

A one-reel carnival of teeth, tassels, and tumbling torsos, You Tell ’Em, Lions, I Roar stages a vaudeville cosmos where Harry Sweet’s rubber-limbed ringmaster ricochets between cages of yawning lions and rows of pearl-toothed chorus girls. The Century Lions—five tawny beasts with manes like back-lit bourbon—refuse to leap through fire until the moon hits a secret note on a xylophone made of human bones. Into this menagerie strides Merta Sterling, a cigarette-smoke siren in a dress the color of dried poppies, smuggling a revolver in her garter and a heart that ticks louder than the circus band. Zip Monberg, a sad-clown contortionist, folds himself into a suitcase to eavesdrop on William Watson’s whip-crack dialogue, only to unfold again when the lions escape, becoming a human bridge over which the audience flees. The plot pirouettes on the question: who gets to roar first, the beasts or the betrayed woman? Every stripe of celluloid shimmers with double-exposed nightmares—lion faces melt into cabaret masks; popcorn becomes snow; tent poles sprout leaves like a forest reclaiming the sawdust. In eleven breathless minutes the film detonates the boundary between spectacle and spectator, leaving only a silver after-image of claws, corsets, and the echo of Sweet’s final grin, swallowed by a velvet curtain that bleeds.