By today's standards, of course, HIGH VOLTAGE with Carol(e) Lombard and Bill ("Hoppy") Boyd would hardly qualify as more than a horribly campy C-movie. The acting is hammy, the plot is sluggish, the cinematography is primitive, and the ending is inane. Worse yet, it contains a grayish atmosphere that's depressing. Some 76 years ago, though, HIGH VOLTAGE must've thrilled the audiences. It served as a stepping stone in the film industry's transition from producing silents to making talkies. From a historical perspective, therefore, it possessed an importance that modern viewers have ignored. The acting itself reflected that transition. Everyone was still relying on exaggerated expressions and stagy gestures to communicate to the audience. The original sound system consisted of transcriptions, which the projectionist played like gramophone recordings. Because the microphones of that era lacked range and sensitivity, the actors had to congregate around hidden ones and shout their lines, which eliminated most of the naturalness in delivery and performance that we have grown through the decades to expect. I strongly suspect that pre-recorded dialogue and sound effects generated most of the "noise" in the true outside scenes. To say the least, too, the script reflected the newness of creating a full-length feature. It had so many "dead spots" that I could almost envision where the message boards of a typical silent belonged. Another clue to its antiquity was the absurd ending. If HIGH VOLTAGE had been a modern movie, both the criminal characters, played by Boyd and Lombard, would have fled to freedom as soon as the opportunity surfaced. Along the way, the snow and cold might have killed them, but that would not have been a chief concern of such (supposedly) hardened felons. Back then, however, moral conduct played a more important role, even among the "bad guys and gals." Another significant difference was the lack of sex, profanity, and drugs. If produced within these last thirty years, Boyd would have found a means of teaching Lombard the real meaning of "Hoppy," Carol's vocabulary would have made a Marine blush, and The Kid would have spent much of the story "blowing dope." HIGH VOLTAGE may not be a historical piece, but it is definitely a piece of history!
Review of High Voltage
