Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Dorathen Better Late Then Never

Griff Lees Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

bkoganbing Before signing with Warner Brothers and after getting his big break with his screen debut in The Front Page, Pat O'Brien appeared in a variety of films of varying quality for different studios. This one is for poverty row Majestic Pictures and for a poverty row film it boasts an impressive cast. But I can safely say that everyone here has done better work in their career. Mind you this is a cast that includes Evelyn Brent, Mary Brian, Neil Hamilton, Louis Calhern and J. Carrol Naish.District Attorney Wallis Clark who is investigating a crooked stock scheme is set up in a love nest by Evelyn Brent and murdered by trigger man Naish. O'Brien is a crime reporter with all kinds of friends in low places and Hamilton is Clark's upright assistant who succeeds him. But both had a high regard for Clark and both want justice for his daughter Mary Brian and both kind of like her.Turns out some of O'Brien's low place friends are indeed responsible. But they work for some blue chip Wall Street crooks. In 1933 blue chip Wall Street crooks were very popular villains.The World Gone Mad should have been a better film. Except for the end which has a great climax where the blue chip crooks get their's, this is a sluggish film. Again at a major studio this would have been a better film.

mark.waltz In what seems like something that Warner Brothers may have filmed, viewed then sold to a poverty row studio just to get their names off of it comes this mystery with a long-winded screenplay and stereotypical characters that did its starry cast no good. When the most memorable scene is a competition over a toy train set between a D.A. father and his young son (Buster Phelps), you know you've got troubles. The D.A. is murdered for threatening to expose fraud and it is up to good guys Pat O'Brien and Neil Hamilton to uncover the killer and the mastermind behind the crime ring.J. Carroll Naish is a stereotypical Spanish villain with Louis Calhern also pretty bad here, typecast all throughout the 1930's in similar roles. He would do much better years later in lively grandfather roles where his only crime was looking too much at the pretty girls. But here, the one dimensional villains makes for a predictable and boring script, and even if the movie covers up its cheapness with an expensive looking set, it can't escape the fact that it creaks loudly in its efforts to tell its pedestrian story. O'Brien's fast-talking performance is the major highlight of the adult actors, but the majority of the film is insipid and deadly dull.

catfish-er The greed and corruption of the 2000's Wall Street could just as easily have been the subject for THE WORLD GONE MAD. To update it, you only need Bernie Madoff sitting on top of the Ponzi scheme, instead of our two antagonists.Both of whom, by the way, could make excellent stand-ins for the Duke brothers in TRADING PLACES.The acting was first rate, with solid performances all around, albeit with no "big name" stars -- at least none of whom I recognized.I found the plot compelling, first from a historical perspective (the Wall Street Crash of 1929). But, also from a contemporary perspective (the Great Recession of 2007).An interesting side note is the marquee in front of the movie theater, which featured THE VAMPIRE BAT, by the same production company. Great art deco scenes; and, good cinematography in both!

Coventry Most of these 30's thrillers/murder mysteries have been forgotten by now because, let's face it, they haven't got much to offer apart from – occasionally – a good story. This little film has a very decent story, fluently written dialogues and some really adequate acting performances, yet it simple can't be called memorable because of the shabbiness of the production. Pat O'Brien ("Hell's House") stars as an obtrusive reporter investigating the vicious assassination of a befriended District Attorney and unravels almost single-handedly an entire network of corruption, blackmail and political scandals. His performance is very good and he gets to say some very slick lines, yet the movie lacks a lot of action and continuity. There's one sequence near the beginning that I found particularly smart, showing how the assignment for murder is passed on to several involved parties and thus creating a complex structure that sadly never gets properly clarified. There are some more ingenious and dared ideas in the plot, but it all looks too poor for you to care. Feel free to avoid this one.