>The Crimson Playgoer

"Frankenstein" is the best of the three films that are now showing at the University. Since it is screened only twice a day, at one and eleven o'clock, you should be sure to go at one of these times. Contrary to the exasperating procedure at the Boston performances, "Frankenstein" is appearing without cuts.

Of the divers beasts, bats, and banshees that have lent their engaging presence to recent films, Frankenstein's monster is the most nearly terrifying. More subtle than Mr. Hyde of the staring eyes and grinning teeth, is this monster whom a mad scientist has pieced together out of the parts of corpses. He comes out of the dark a giant, stumbling, inarticulate shape, with square skull, inhuman eyelids, and the filmed eyes of one too long dead. You may see the raised suture at the wrists, where the mismatched hands are grafted to the arms.

It is his business to sustain the whole show. Whenever the film begins to gather momentum, the director inserts an ill-advised comic interlude, wherein Frederick Kerr lends a English country-house atmosphere to a supposedly German baronial castle. It is nevertheless quite possible to overlook such discrepancies and to find the show entertaining.

"Husband's Holiday" is a re-simmering of the free-soul theme in a middle-class milieu. Living in sin has seldom been more pedestrian. Miss Vivienne Osborne permits her husband, Mr. Clive Brook, to conduct his extra-martial affair with Miss Juliette Compton, knowing that he'll come home just as surely as Little Bo-Peep. There is little for the erring husband to choose between the two women, and Mr, Brook takes no great pleasure in either. Neither does the Playgoer. Best scene: Mr. Brook playing with the children's toy tracks.

"Riders of the Purple Sage" is in the William S. Hart tradition, which means that it is not to be sniffed at by anyone but a pedant. The south-western scenery is splendid, and you should be able to lose yourself very pleasantly in watching it and remembering last summer out west. Ignore the story; watch placidly as the hardriding Mr. O'Brien jumps his canyons, but don't try to bridge the chasms in the plot. This approach will be understood by all true devotees of the primeval horse-opera.

There is an excellent "Silly Symphony", which takes as its musical background an old-time hit of program-music called "A Hunt in the Black Forest". Its companion-piece on old phonograph records, "In a Clock Store", is the basis for the cartoon now playing at the Fine Arts. G. G. B.