The Crooked Circle

The Crooked Circle sounds like a plot that should come from a comic book or pulp magazine. Maybe it did come from there for all I know. It's about 2 elite groups of people: one is a hooded bunch of criminals and the other is band of amateur sleuths. When the Sphinx Club gets a member of the Crooked Circle arrested the criminals set out to get revenge by assassinating one of the rival gang's more prominent members.

The rest of the Sphinx Club pulls together to protect their threatened member, but the new guy and the ladyfriend of one of the members are acting mighty suspiciously.

The two groups end up in an old house with a history of strange happenings. It's also chock full of secret passages. I'm a fan of secret passage movies, but this one goes overboard – way overboard. Maybe it was on purpose since the movie does attempt to be humorous as well as suspenseful. I began wondering if they intended for this to be a comedy and just didn't quite make it to that level of consistent humor.

Anyway, intentional or not the number of passages this house has is comical, and the Crooked Circle knows them well. So they weave about through all these passages causing mayhem with the Sphinx Club.

Lots of problems here. First of all, the technical quality is so poor that it actually makes the movie hard to follow at times. I never did figure out exactly why the Sphinx Club chose this particular house to stay in. They played right into the Crooked Circle's hand. Nor did I figure out who the creepy old man at the beginning, the who who introduces us to the mysterious history of this house, is supposed to be.

So maybe the movie contains answers to these questions lost somewhere in the indistinct picture and muddled audio, and maybe not. Either way I find the ending too weak to be satisfying. I mean I don't have anything against the ending itself, more-so that the Sphinx Club is supposed to be an impressive gang of amateur sleuths yet seem to be the most clueless people in the whole movie except maybe for the couple that is there just for comic relief.

Speaking of that comic relief it comes mostly by way of a bumbling policeman and an easily scared maid. These two have their humorous moments, but both of them get old rather quickly. I guess they do get a pretty good payoff in the end.

MORALITY:

This is an extremely tame movie. There is no violence although there is talk of crimes and some gunfire.

There is no sex, nudity, or strong language at all.

The scares are extremely mild. This is fine for younger viewers if any of them would actually want to sit through the pitiful quality of it.

SPIRITUALITY:

The Crooked Circle group is sometimes called an occult group, but I didn't see anything (aside from some hooded robes perhaps) that would make me categorize them in such a way. Mostly they are just thieves and such.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

If you like the really old dark house kind of flicks and want one with a sense of humor this might be worth checking out. Don't expect too much out of it, though.

#TheCrookedCircle