Strange Justice (1932) Review - Fast, Cheap, and Beautifully Messy

If you have 70 minutes to kill and love dusty pre-code melodramas where everyone talks like they have a mouthful of marbles, Strange Justice is worth a look. 🎬

People who dig snappy 1930s crime quickies with corrupt bankers and sad-eyed dames will find it pretty fun.

But if you need crisp audio or plots that make 100% logical sense, you will probably hate this.

The setup is pretty simple. Henry Judson is a fancy socialite banker who is stealing from his own bank to keep up his rich-guy lifestyle.

But then his assistant manager, Waters—who is a total sleezeball—catches him red-handed.

Instead of calling the cops, Waters blackmails him. Naturally.

Soon enough, both of these guys are deep in the mud. They need a fall guy fast, and they pick Wally.

Wally is an ex-con who is just trying to go straight, and he is dating Rose, a cute hat check girl played by Marian Marsh.

Before you know it, poor Wally is framed and sitting on death row for a crime he did not do.

The movie moves fast. Like, blink and you miss the entire embezzlement setup in the beginning.

I love how the bank office looks so small. It is basically a desk and a very fake-looking window with a painted background.

There is this one scene where Marian Marsh is crying, and her hat is tilted at such a weird angle.

It looks like it is about to slide right off her head, and I kept waiting for her to adjust it. She never did. 🤷‍♂️

The acting is very theatrical, which is typical for 1932. Some of the line deliveries are so stiff they make you chuckle.

Reginald Denny plays the blackmailing assistant with this weird little mustache twitch.

It is so goofy but you cannot look away from his face.

It reminds me of some of the shady characters you see in older pre-code stuff like Ladies of Leisure, but way cheaper.

Also, there is a scene in a courtroom where the judge looks like he is literally asleep.

He is just resting his chin on his hand, eyes closed. I think the actor was actually napping on set.

The sound quality on the print I watched was pretty rough, though that is not the movie's fault.

Still, sometimes the dialogue gets drowned out by what sounds like a radiator clanking in the background.

And the ending comes out of nowhere.

One minute Wally is facing the electric chair, and the next minute... well, it wraps up in about two minutes flat.

They just wanted to go home, I guess.

Odd things I noticed:

• The hat check room has about three hats in it. Worst business ever.
• Norman Foster has this incredibly shiny hair. Like, wet-paint shiny.
• The jail cell looks like it is made of painted cardboard. If Wally kicked the wall, he probably would have escaped.
• Walter Brennan is in this! He has a tiny, uncredited role and he looks so young it is scary.

It is not a masterpiece. But for a lazy afternoon, it is a decent little time machine back to 1932.