The New Pictures

The Sea Wolf (Warner Bros.) spills more gore than Hollywood has seen in many a month. Its press agents claim that it is the only picture ever filmed in which every member of the cast has at least one fight. Before its 47 brawls were completed, they say, Chief Scar-Maker Carl Axzelle had to send out for extra help. By the time the film is finished, only two characters are still alive.

The popularity of such sustained mayhem has been thoroughly tested: this is the sixth cinema version of the Jack London novel in 30 years. To man the unpleasant cast (only woman is Ida Lupino), the ranks of Hollywood hoodlums were culled for such experienced mischief-makers as Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield and Gene Lockhart. Guided by the extravagant hand of Director Michael Curtiz, The Sea Wolf's latest treatment stresses the psychological quirks of Wolf Larsen (Robinson), skipper of the scavenger ship Ghost, a sadistic tyrant who likes to curl up with a volume of Milton's poems when no one is looking. Some notable support is furnished the frowning, fighting actors by Newcomer Alexander Knox as the author stranded aboard the Ghost and by Barry Fitzgerald, as the ship's cook. For restless cinemaddicts whom only blood & thunder can quiet, The Sea Wolf should prove a strong sedative.

Topper Returns (United Artists) is the straightforward title to a roundabout whodunit. As on two previous occasions, Cosmo Topper, Thorne Smith's shy, baffled little gentleman who consorts with ghosts, is played by wispy Roland Young. This time his customary bewilderment is complicated by a murder in a creaky old manse with sliding panels and secret passageways.

Topper's nextdoor neighbors are a houseful of leering, peering evildoers and a pair of curvaceous blondes. One blonde (Carole Landis) has returned from China to inherit the place. The other (Joan Blondell) strings along as friend and funster, gets a knife in her back before the night is out. Follows the usual Thorne Smith transmogrification in which Joan turns ghost, floats over to Topper's house, lures him, his wife (Billie Burke), her maid (Patsy Kelly) and his colored chauffeur (Eddie Anderson) back to the scene of the crime for a dose of spooks. Before Topper points a thin, hesitating finger at the murderer the film shows: Billie Burke in her familiar role as an addlepate; gravel-voiced Eddie Anderson falling through trap doors, rasping protest; Carole Landis' highly touted legs; Patsy Kelly cracking wise.

Following the present fad of humorizing homicide (Arsenic and Old Lace, Mr. and Mrs. North), Topper Returns puts the emphasis on nonsense. Some of it is just tiresome repetition of one of the cinema's pet tricks--an invisible person startling the other characters by smoking a cigaret, rowing a boat, opening a door. Some is fair comedy--Roland Young's befuddled resignation to a world of phantoms and foul play; the friendly insolence of Eddie Anderson (Radio Comic Jack Benny's radio butler, Rochester Van Jones). All of it is hokum, tried & true.

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