Enter Horlick Soames

Comedy drama of robbery and kidnap foiled with the help of an early mobile phone.

Horlick Soames sits in a small boat with a colleague, unravelling a fishing line. He wears an exaggerated moustache and nearly loses his hat, which suggests a comical bumbling character. He wears a tailcoat, light check trousers and a straw boater with an outsize safety pin in the hatband, and bears little physical resemblance to the great detective Sherlock Holmes, though he does carry a pipe and a magnifying glass. In a street, young Dr Wotfun yawns as he leans against a car outside a garage, and watches a young woman, identified as The Girl, enter a bank. He observes as she leaves the bank and crosses the road where four gangsters riding in a car seize her bag. A few minutes later the gangsters' car is speeding along a rural road followed by Dr Wotfun and the girl in another car. The gangsters stop their car and stand in the road pointing their guns to confront and seize their pursuers. The girl is taken by the gangsters in one car, and Dr Wotfun is bound and driven off by two gangsters in the other car. Meanwhile, Horlick Soames continues to wind the fishing line and pulls up a catch. In the back of the gangsters' car, Dr Wotfun manages to use a portable telephone apparatus to contact the leisurely Horlick Soames who is wearing a similar apparatus around his waist. His fishing companion bursts into action and the motorboat speeds off to a mooring where Horlick Soames jumps out of the boat and into a car. The gangsters leave their cars and take the hostages to their stronghold, a hollow in a sandy beach, where their accomplices are waiting. Reaching the gangsters' cars, Horlick Soames stops his car and raises the bonnet to light his pipe. On the beach, the girl is led up the sand dunes. Dr Wotfun runs after her but is knocked down. Horlick Soames stealthily climbs the dunes, listens intently, then throws a missile at the stronghold which fells the gangsters. He takes a rope, goes up the dunes and throws a lasso around the gangster holding the girl. She runs to Dr Wotfun who is still dazed. Horlick Soames joins them to reunite the girl with her bag. As the young couple kiss, Horlick Soames serenades them with a banjo ukelele. His outfit now seems fitting for a minstrel.

Additional Description

Horlick Soames, The Famous Detective is played by E. Guy Whitby Dr Wotfun, His Assistant is played by N.H.C. Thompson Soapsud Sim is played by W.H. Avery The Girl is played by Marjorie Miles The Gangsters are played by J. Mason, H.L. Camm, R. Bond, J. Greenwood and K. Donaldson Produced by Edmund F. Pipe The making and screening of this film by Felixstowe Amateur Productions is noted in Home Movies and Home Talkies magazine 1932. Edmund Pipe was Hon. Secretary of the society in Felixstowe established two years previously. Enter Horlick Soames was filmed in the Stalham district of Norfolk, and was screened there to an audience including Cyril McLaglan, the well-known film actor. See Home Movies and Home Talkies vol. 1 no. 3 August 1932 page 109, no. 4 September 1932 pages 144 and 145.

Intertitles

HORLICK SOAMES STILL UNRAVELLING MYSTERIES - DR WOTFUN ALSO BUSILY ENGAGED FIVE MINUTES LATER A FEW MINUTES LATER MEANWHILE ... THE GANG'S STRONGHOLD HOT ON THE SCENT! FINIS

Keywords

guns; kidnapping; hostages; robberies; angling; motorboats; cars; pipes; detectives; rescues; mobile phones; telephones; banjos; ukeleles; banjoleles; kissing; crimes; romance; smoking; pipes