Why Klondike Annie is Mae West's Weirdest, Funniest Movie

You should absolutely watch Klondike Annie tonight if you love snappy 1930s dialogue and want to see Mae West preach the gospel in a tight dress. But if you are looking for a serious, historically accurate gold rush drama, you will probably hate every single second of this. 🙄

Honestly, the whole thing is just beautifully ridiculous.

The movie starts in San Francisco where Mae plays "The Frisco Doll," a woman trapped in a gilded cage by a creepy club owner. After a scuffle where she accidentally kills him with a dagger, she hops a ship to Alaska to escape the law.

On this ship, she meets a sweet, frail missionary named Sister Annie who is heading to the Yukon to save souls. Sister Annie dies of natural causes during the voyage, so what does our girl Rose do?

She steals the dead woman's identity, obviously.

The funniest part is that when she gets to Alaska, she doesn't even try to act like a real nun or missionary. She still walks with that famous, exaggerated hip sway and talks like she is about to ask the congregation for a drink. 💃

Yet, somehow, the townsfolk in the freezing north just eat it up.

Victor McLaglen plays Bull Brackett, the ship captain who is completely obsessed with her. He has this massive, rugged face and spends half the movie looking like a confused puppy whenever she looks his way.

Their chemistry is weirdly great because they are both such physically loud actors.

I noticed that the movie gets way better once they actually land in Alaska and the religious spoofing begins. Before that, the shipboard scenes drag a bit, and you can almost feel the writers trying to figure out how to keep the police plot relevant.

Unlike other stuff from this era, like the overly dramatic Inspiration, this film never takes itself seriously for more than two minutes. It knows exactly what it is, which is a vehicle for Mae West to drop double entendres.

There is this one scene where she is leading a church meeting and singing "It's Better to Be Safe Than Sorry." The way the extras in the crowd look so genuinely baffled is hilarious.

You can tell some of those background actors did not know how to react to her.

Also, the indoor sets for the Alaskan winter are so obviously filmed on a warm Hollywood soundstage. Mae is wrapped in these absurdly pristine, fluffy white furs while the extras have fake frost sprayed on their noses.

It is those little, cheap details that make me love old movies like this even more.

Sure, the ending feels incredibly rushed, like they realized they only had five minutes of film left and needed to wrap up the murder charges. But who cares about a clean resolution when the journey was this silly? 🤷

Some weird things I noticed:

• The transition effects between scenes look like someone sliding a piece of cardboard across the camera.
• A dog in the background of one street scene looks very confused by the fake snow.
• Mae's character has a maid who seems to exist only to hold her heavy coats and look annoyed.
• The song "An Occidental Woman in an Oriental Mood" is... wild, to say the least.

If you want a cozy, laugh-out-loud evening with a movie that does not demand much brainpower, give this one a shot.