Alias Mary Smith (1932) review - Drunk playboys and cheap detective fun

If you love dusty, crackly 1930s mysteries where the characters talk like they have somewhere better to be, Alias Mary Smith is worth an hour of your life. But if you can't stand old scratchy audio or actors who over-enunciate every single syllable, you should probably skip it. 🕵️‍♀️

The plot is pretty simple. Blanche Mehaffey plays a girl trying to get the goods on a gangster who did a murder.

Then this playboy guy who drinks way too much—played by John Darrow—stumbles into her life. He's honestly hilarious because he is so visibly drunk in almost every scene he is in.

Like, his hat is always tilted at this impossible angle. I kept waiting for it to fall off, but it never did.

It reminds me of the chaotic energy in some of those other cheap indies from the late twenties, like Turn Back the Hours. Except this one has sound, so you get to hear everyone slur their lines a bit.

There is this one scene in a hallway where the camera just... sits there. For like two minutes, nothing happens except a guy walking up and down.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Alias Mary Smith (1932) through its definitive frames.

It's so awkward, you can almost hear the director holding his breath behind the camera.

Mehaffey is decent, though she does that weird thing where she stares just slightly off-camera whenever she gets scared. It makes her look like she's trying to read cue cards hidden in the curtains. 🫣

The gangster, played by Edmund Breese, is your standard grumpy old guy who looks like he wants to go home. He has this great line about 'dames' that made me laugh out loud because of how angry he got over a sandwich.

If you liked Outcast, you might find some of the melodrama here familiar. But Alias Mary Smith is much more of a silly, fast-paced detective yarn.

It's not a masterpiece, obviously. The ending feels like they ran out of film and just decided to stop shooting.

But hey, the playboy's drunk acting is worth the price of admission alone. 🥃