Juggernaut

How's about... murder!?

Well, what would you suggest? You're the beautiful young wife of a bed-ridden cotton baron. You're `friend' is going through your allowance like Evian water (casinos here on the Cote d'Azure are so glamorous) and throwing his gigolo at that Margaret Dumont look-alike every other scene. Worse, your old sot of a husband is threatening to decrease your allowance. Can you imagine that?

But how to bump off the old boy? Fortunately for you creepy Dr. Sartoricus recently lurched into town after his was forced to close his Moroccan research lab for lack of funds. Lack of funds!

Such are the premises of JUGGERNAUT, throw in a dashing son, a pretty nurse and a potty servant or two and the plot pretty much writes itself. The pretty young wife is played by Mona Goya, who sounds French and appeared mostly in French films during her thirty year career, although one internet site tells us she was born in Mexico City and another Fort Wayne, Indiana. In any event, she Mon Dieus with the best of them and shares a couple of delightful carpet chewing scenes with Boris Karloff. Joan Wyndham is the other pretty young one, Nurse Eve Rowe, in this her last movie role at the tender age of 25. JUGGERNAUT may not carry quite the thrill and mystery it advertises, but members of its cast are intriguingly obscure.

Of course, Karloff is the only reason to get this one, and he's menacingly effective slouching over his shorter co-stars. Karloff's genius was in his ability to add a touch of menace to the most benign situations, and find pathos in the most detestable of characters. He's always worth watching, even in inferior vehicles like JUGGERNAUT.

Unfortunately, the audio and video quality on the dvd wavers between bad and terrible. Besides the usual scratches and flares there are instances of missing frames and dialogue drown out by white noise. That's all understandable and unforgivable on a print of this age. What isn't forgivable is the flutter that occurs midway through the film. The print jumped the sprockets and the image fluttered. That is something that should have been corrected before this dvd was released.

To begin with: JUGGERNAUT does NOT run 90 minutes. This British-made programmer clocks in at a lean 64, tops. Caveat emptor.

Second: only Anglo-cinemaphiles/authorities will recognize any of the supporting cast (not that it's critical).

Finally: a decent copy, that is, one free of jitter, scratches, edit breaks or dropouts, has yet to come available on the home video market, most unfortunate for Karloff fans or aficionados of vintage mysteries. Maybe some day? Meanwhile, for all of us it's a choice of junk.... or naught.

Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.

(4.6) Juggernaut (UK-1936) - Boris Karloff/Joan Wyndham/Arthur Margetson/Mona Goys/Anthony Ireland

Specialists in niche market material such as vintage programmers and TV shows, Pennsylvania-based ALPHA VIDEO is owned by Jerry Greene, founder of Collectable Records. Quality of their unrestored movie transfers varies from fair to good, based on condition of source material stock (often old 16mm broadcast prints). The only extras provided are a catalog insert and DVD-accessible title list.

Great little Boris Karloff British thriller. It's just unfortunate there seems to be no decent prints out there. One can only hope that someday an original British print may show up. The Alpha DVD is the usual splices and missing footage.

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