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Cult Review
Senior Film Conservator
If you love fast-talking 1930s comedies where gangsters act like weirdly polite businessmen, you should probably watch No Ransom tonight. It is a quick, messy 68 minutes that anyone who loves old bargain-bin cinema will find charming, though modern blockbuster fans will definitely hate how cheap the sets look.
The plot is pure Damon Runyon, which means everybody talks like they have a thesaurus in their pocket but forgot how to use it. Robert McWade plays this rich, grumpy dad who is totally fed up with his spoiled family.
So what does he do? He hires a mobster named Ranoni (played by Jack La Rue, looking incredibly greasy and cool) to kidnap him. Yes, he pays to get kidnapped. It is that kind of movie. 💸
The whole thing is just an excuse to watch these two very different men bicker in a dusty room. I noticed that McWade's character wears his trousers so high up his chest they almost touch his armpits.
It is honestly distracting. I kept waiting for him to pull them up even further during his angry rants.
Phillips Holmes is also here, playing the love interest, but he has the charisma of a wet cardboard box. He just stands around looking pretty and slightly confused, like he wandered onto the wrong soundstage.
It made me think of older films like West Point where the male leads actually had some bounce to them. But here? Holmes just kind of melts into the wallpaper.
My favorite part is definitely Jack La Rue. He does this thing with his eyes where he looks like he is constantly trying to remember if he left his stove on.
It is great. He is supposed to be a scary gangster, but he treats the old man like a fragile glass vase.
At one point, he pours him a cup of coffee and the sound effect of the pouring is so loud it sounds like a waterfall. ☕ The audio quality in these cheap 1930s indies is always a trip.
Speaking of weird audio, there is a scene in the middle where a car drives away. The car is clearly parked and someone is just shaking the camera, but the sound of the engine starts about three seconds *after* they supposedly start driving.
It is these little cheap mistakes that make me love this era of filmmaking. It feels like it was made by real, tired people on a Friday afternoon.
If you have seen other family dramas from this era like The Dangerous Age, you know how these stories usually go. They get very preachy about "family values" and "respecting your elders."
No Ransom tries to do that too, but it keeps getting sidetracked because the gangster stuff is just way more fun. Every time we go back to the spoiled family crying about their missing dad, the movie slows down to a crawl.
You just want to get back to the cabin where the mobsters are playing cards and complaining about their shoes. It reminded me of the odd, shifting tone in The Little Widow, where comedy and sudden sadness just sort of bump into each other without warning.
Leila Hyams is actually really good here, playing the daughter who has to realize her family is awful. She has this one scene where she cries, and you can see the mascara running down her cheek in a way that feels totally un-Hollywood.
It is a small, messy detail that probably was not planned. Or maybe it was, but the camera stays on her just a second too long, making it feel wonderfully awkward.
Then there is the henchmen. One of them is constantly chewing on a toothpick.
I swear, he does not have a single line of dialogue, but he is in almost every shot in the cabin just chewing. I spent about ten minutes just watching his jaw go up and down instead of listening to the actual plot.
That is the beauty of these quickie B-movies. You get these weird little human performances happening in the background while the main actors do their big speeches.
It is not a masterpiece, and it is definitely not as tightly wound as some of the bigger studio pictures of 1934. But it have this cozy, dusty charm that you cannot really replicate today.
It is like finding a weird old postcard in an antique shop. You do not need to know the whole story to appreciate the vibe.
IMDb 3.6
1916
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