Never Too Late (1935): A charmingly dusty mess

Is this worth your time?

Honestly, only if you have a massive soft spot for the kind of B-movies that feel like they were filmed in someone’s backyard over a long weekend. If you are looking for anything approaching the polish of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, look elsewhere. People who love tight, logical scripts will probably want to pull their hair out by the twenty-minute mark.

The whole thing moves at such a frantic pace that you barely have time to notice the background extras staring directly into the camera. It’s not exactly The Great Diamond Robbery, but it has that same desperate energy where everyone is running, shouting, or looking suspicious for no clear reason.

Notes from the couch

• There is a scene where a character hides behind a door that is clearly about four inches too narrow to actually conceal him.
• The dialogue sounds like it was written on a napkin while the actors were already standing on set.
• Paul Ellis is doing a lot of heavy lifting with his eyebrows alone.
• I swear I saw the same two street lamps in every exterior shot.

The plot is a total mess. It’s just a necklace moving from hand to hand while people get hit over the head with various household objects. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in The Broadway Boob, but without the benefit of a coherent punchline.

There is this one moment where a heavy goes to grab our hero and just sort of... pats his shoulder instead. It’s like they were afraid of hurting each other. The *entire movie* has that weird, polite violence where nobody actually gets hurt, they just sort of fall down because it’s time for the scene to end. 🤷‍♂️

I found myself wondering if they even had a script or just a list of locations they could access for free. It doesn't matter, really. It’s a relic, a weird little artifact of a time when you could just throw people in front of a lens and call it a mystery.

It’s not good. But it is very 1935.