Perfect Clue

Robert Vignola's The Perfect Clue was far from "perfect" on the day of its original release in 1935. A product of the decidedly less than majestic Majestic Pictures, the movie was a threadbare, low-budget release that never made major theaters in its own time. And time hasn't been kind to the movie since, based on Alpha Video's DVD release -- the worn, faded 16 mm source print shows a fair number of splices and missing frames, and the full-screen (1.33:1) image is grainy in its best moments. The image is watchable, however, and the audio is good and loud, at least, so no one is going to strain themselves viewing it, and for Skeets Gallagher's performance as the heroine's would-be benefactor, it's just about worth seeing. This is the kind of second-feature entertainment that made it into lots of neighborhood movie houses (alright, maybe not in the best neighborhoods) in the mid-'30s. The disc contains the usual half-dozen chapters common to all Alpha releases, and opens automatically to a simple menu with the "play" option in the default position.