SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

bkoganbing It's a Monogram film folks so don't expect too much. But if you're a fan of Harold Lloyd, lead character and creator of Cosmo Jones on the radio, Frank Graham, comes over like Harold Lloyd in one of his sound films. Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher did his smashing on radio originally. In this film our hero freshly graduated from correspondence school and now a detective happens to witness an attempted kidnapping of an oil heiress. He's with Sergeant Richard Cromwell who fires some shots and wounds a 'bystander'. Cromwell gets no help from the victim who denies anything was going on and is demoted. That's when Graham goes to work with the aid of porter Eustace Jones played by Mantan Moreland on hiatus from Charlie Chan. It all becomes too real when the heiress is kidnapped for real.Mantan and his shtick help this film along as does Edgar Kennedy playing a police captain with Irish brogue added to his slow burn.Graham has a lot of screen credits, mostly however as voice only. This is one of the few times you'll actually see him on screen. I suspect Monogram wanted to do a series of Cosmo Jones films, but the demand was underwhelming.Graham in his crime fighting mode has the talents of voice mimicry and ventriloquism at his command. But I suspect not in real life. His impression of Edgar Kennedy was too real, it had to be dubbed.Sam Katzman over at Monogram had enough series with the East Side Kids and Charlie Chan. Another wasn't in the cards.

mark.waltz This is below par crime drama focusing on a kidnapped socialite who was involved with criminals and an amateur detective's attempts to solve this crime while visiting the big city from the sticks. It's all pretty mild stuff with comic moments from Mantan Moreland as a malapropism filled janitor that the titled character (Frank Graham), especially when they encounter bumbling cop Edgar Kennedy. In fact, when it was all over, I pretty much had forgotten what I had just witnessed with the exception of Mantan's performance (especially every time he encounters a dead body). Moreland is one of those black character actors who can be amusing if you can get past the stereotypical dialog he was forced to say, but it takes a genius of an actor to make you laugh in spite of the current political atmosphere concerning the type of roles talented black actors were forced to take on. In all fairness, the gangsters are presented equally as stupid, and they all happen to be Caucasian. Overall, this isn't any different or any better or worse than the hundreds of low budget crime capers made during the late 1930's and 1940's, only that the presentation is very mediocre and other than a few minor moments of amusement, the result is a weak Z grade feature that doesn't hold up as well as others.

dbborroughs Based on a radio show this short (an hour) film is a bit of a meandering mess.the plot of the film has two gangs going to war and somehow in the middle of it all the daughter of an oil man is kidnapped. As the police try to solve the crime(s), Cosmo Jones, a genius and amateur criminologist forces himself into the case.This is a weird film where the title character doesn't show up for a quarter of the running time. When he does show up he sort of seems as if he were added into the mix for no good reason, with a young police Sargent taking the lead. Its not until into the second half of the film that he takes center stage. Another weird twist is Mantan Moreland who is listed fourth in the credits as a "star" and he only shows up close to the half way mark in a role that requires him to do little more than stand around for most of his screen time (I guess a pay check is a pay check).The problem is that the film wanders to and fro with out any real direction. Its starts off as a gangster story, shifts to the cops, shifts again to gang war film, turns again into a murder tale then swerves into the kidnap tale. Characters take center stage then fall to the background over and over again, not like in an ensemble film where there is ebb and flow, instead its like seeing a series of almost unconnected photographs. The result is a rather bland and un-involving movie, which is a shame since the film does have some genuinely good moments (the near torture of Moreland is horrifying in a very real way) and there are more than its share of funny lines.Not really worth seeking out, I'd pretty much let this one slide unless I ran across it on TV, in which case it would be worth taking a peak.

Mike-764 Two rival gangs start to declare war on each other, and an innocent bystander in the mix, Professor Cosmo Jones (a correspondence detective school graduate),decides to help the police stop the melee, much to the disappointment of the police captain. When a patrolman friend of Cosmo is investigated in a gang shooting and later kidnap of a key witness, Cosmo, friend Sgt. Flanagan, and Cosmo's partner Eustace unfold a plan to have the gang members wipe each other out. This one could have been somewhat better, but the plot outline for the movie probably didn't make for a long picture so a synopsis of the two gangs encounters with each other make for a 12-15 minute story where it would be at most a 90 second montage in a Warner Brothers movie of the same genre. Graham as Cosmo makes for an interesting character though, even I don't recognize what OTR program he ever appeared on. Kennedy & Moreland as usual make for good comic relief, but Cromwell's character seems to lifeless and usually halts the pace of the film in the scenes set around him. OK film for Monogram though. Rating- 4.