A Burglar to the Rescue Review: Creaky, Spooky, and Weirdly Fun

If you have thirty minutes to kill and love weird, dusty crime shorts where people talk like they have a mouth full of marbles, A Burglar to the Rescue is a fun little relic. But if you hate stagey acting and plots that rely on guys standing in dark rooms explaining their entire backstories to each other, you should probably skip this one.

It is basically a filmed theater play, but with a bizarre twist that made me double-take. 🕵️‍♂️

The Setup

The story is simple enough. A sweaty bank president (played with great cheek-puffing by Thurston Hall) is fixing the books at night because he has been stealing from his own vault.

Then, a guy with a gun walks in through the window.

Turns out, this visitor is an escaped convict who used to work at the bank. He was railroaded to prison years ago to cover up the boss's own crimes.

What makes this whole thing weirdly cool is the writing credits. Walter B. Gibson worked on this script.

Yes, that Walter B. Gibson—the guy who created The Shadow.

And guess what happens every few minutes? A giant, spooky shadow appears on the wall and a voice tells us what is about to happen next.

It is incredibly goofy but also kind of awesome in a cheap, spooky radio-show way. The shadow literally looks like someone just holding a cardboard cutout in front of a desk lamp.

Small Things I Noticed

• The ledger books look brand new, not like heavy, worn-out bank books at all. They look like they were bought at a local stationery store five minutes before the cameras started rolling.
• Arthur Aylesworth plays the burglar with this intense, nervous energy. He keeps waving his gun around, but he holds it so close to the other actor's face I was worried he would accidentally poke him in the eye.
• There is one point where a character says "I've been waiting for this night," and the pause afterward is so long I thought my video player had frozen.

I love these kinds of cheap tricks. It reminds me a bit of the rough-around-the-edges charm in The Bond Boy, though this one is much more talky.

Charlotte Wynters shows up too, but she doesn't get much to do except look worried in a very 1930s way.

Still, that shadow gimmick kept me hooked. It is like the movie is constantly whispering spoilers to you while you are trying to watch it.

Who does that? It is so bizarre.

If you like finding weird little footnotes in movie history, hunt this one down. It is not a masterpiece, but it has that cozy, creaky attic vibe I just love. 🚪