Movie-Mania (1937) Review - Mandolin Shredding & Cheap Sets

If you have twenty minutes and a soft spot for bizarre, fast-paced 1930s variety acts, yes, Movie-Mania is absolutely worth a quick look. It is basically a fever dream of musical numbers held together by one very energetic man.

If you hate old-school vaudeville or expect a real plot, please run away now.

So the whole setup is Dave Apollon playing this manic studio boss who does literally everything. He is the director, the writer, the producer, and apparently the guy who plays the mandolin like his life depends on it. 🎻

It feels less like a movie and more like a guy showing off his cool friends. Honestly, some of these acts are wild.

There is this group called the Savoy Dancers who do these crazy flips. One of the dancers does this weird spin where I was genuinely worried about their neck.

Then we get Yvonne Moray. She is tiny but has this massive, booming voice that completely catches you off guard.

The sets look like they were built in about five minutes. You can see the painted backgrounds wobbling slightly when people move too fast.

It has that cheap, charming theatricality you do not really see anymore, unlike more polished stuff of the era like Broadway Arizona.

I love how Apollon just wanders from set to set. He does not even try to make the transitions make sense.

One minute we are in a Spanish courtyard, the next we are watching tap dancers in what looks like a school gymnasium. The editing is incredibly abrupt.

A song will end, and *bam*—we are immediately in a different room with zero explanation.

At one point, Apollon starts playing his mandolin with his band, and he gets this intensely serious look on his face. He is shredding. Like, actually shredding on a mandolin in 1937.

It is definitely a relic of its time, similar to how weirdly paced things like All Aboard can feel to modern eyes.

Some of the humor is... well, it is 1937 humor. A lot of mugging for the camera and goofy reaction shots that go on a second too long.

But the energy is hard to dislike. It is just people who are incredibly good at their highly specific, weird talents doing them at maximum speed.

A few things I wrote down while watching:

• The mandolin solo is actually insane. Dave Apollon was not messing around.
• The painted brick walls look incredibly fake. Like, cardboard fake.
• Yvonne Moray steals the entire short in about two minutes.
• The crowd in the background of the club scene looks like they were told they would get paid in soup. Very unenthusiastic clapping.

It is short, dumb, and full of great music. Definitely worth the twenty minutes if you are into this kind of thing.