Haldane of the Secret Service (1923)

Harry Houdini's one and only facial expression

Directed by Harry Houdini
Starring Harry Houdini, Gladys Leslie, William Humphrey
Produced by Houdini Picture Corporation

Okay, this is where I write my synopsis of what happened in this movie.  Only, I have no idea what happened in this movie.

There are counterfeiters.  There is at least one murder.  There's a passing reference to drugs.  There's a stolen piece of art that the Chinese care about.

Houdini plays an agent of some sort, but that's never spelled out very clearly.  He is the son of another slain agent, so he sort of wants vengeance.  He runs all over the world to track the mysterious Dr. Yu and his vaguely criminal ring.  We never really see them doing anything bad, but Houdini doesn't like them and that should be good enough.

There is also a love interest.  She's one of the bad guys.  Except that she's not.  But she goes with the bad guys to England and France in order to... Ow, my head hurts.

So narratively, this is a mess.  What else?

Title cards.  This movie has more dialogue than any movie I have seen.  I would guess out of 84 minutes of film, 30 are spent reading.  Most of the dialogue is pointless.  We get the mood and interaction from the actors.  We do not need it spelled out.

There are flashbacks.  Houdini asks someone what happened and they recount the tale as we see it on screen.  Repeatedly.  I'm never sure if we are supposed to believe the retelling we are being shown.  Unreliable narrators can be a fun plot device (see Usual Suspects).  Here, the fact that any given narrator may be a liar never even occurs to the Houdini.

As for Houdini the actor, all I can say is he is a great magician.  He has one emotion through the entire film.  I would hate to attempt to characterize what that emotion is because I'm not sure anyone involved with the production knows.

The only good image of the film is a moment where the captured Haldane is strapped to a water wheel that begins churning.  The image of a man rotating around amidst the torrent of water is striking.  It's also a great metaphor for the film: the torture seems purposeless as he is not actually going underwater and the whole wheel soon falls apart, like the plot of this movie.

In the end, our hero is not even around for the climax and reveal of who the bad guy is.  I was genuinely surprised about the identity of Dr. Yu, though I can't decide whether that shock comes from the screenplay or my own complete disinterest in anything the movie offered during the previous 80 minutes.  Haldane does end up with the girl who is possibly already married to two different people and in league with an international cartel, but hey: details, right?

Haldane of the Secret Service is a terrible movie.  It's the world's most ineffective agent against the world's most incompetent criminal conspiracy.  In his last film role, Houdini proves he has one last trick up his sleeve: the ability to make an hour-and-a-half of my life disappear.

1/2 out of ***** stars

NOTE: The Kino DVD contained some archival footage of Houdini doing some escapes as well as part of a film in which he survives a plane crash.  Those are all far more interesting than this movie.  There is also a 1910 Houdini-inspired film Slippery Jim which is incredible in its inventiveness.