Peter Lorre as the classic bad guy in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Man Who Knew Too Much"

Well, here we are, a quarter of the way thru. I knew this was going to be an exhausting time-consuming endeavor and I also knew that the first 25 years were probably going to be the toughest to get through being that silent film s simply not my forte. But I’ve made it and in some small way, that in itself is a victory I can be proud of. Of course, on the other side of the coin, I still have 75 movies to go. But if they keep entertaining at the level the past few movies have, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Originally, I was planning on watching The Thin Man, but unable to find a copy of it online and not wanting to watch It Happened One Night again, I settled on the overlooked Alfred Hitchcock suspenser The Man Who Knew Too Much. It is pretty evident that Hitch wasn’t too experienced in staging shoot-outs when the time came to shoot this movie. The flow of this film really starts to stagnate when it gets to the big climactic shoot-out that seems to go on forever. Now, I’m not asking for a quickie-bang, but the way this shoot-out is shot, well, it could have been executed better.

Peter Lorre is excellent though as the evil ring leader who kidnaps a young-ish girl from her parents. He is one of the few actors I wish was still alive and acting. Wouldn’t it just be a blast to watch Tarantino direct Peter Lorre or have him be the villian in another Die Hard/Lethal Weapon/hell, Beverly Hills Cop? Or perhaps have him be the Penguin in the next Batman movie. Sometimes, there really is a “one-and-only” and it’s a joy to watch them excel at what they were born to do. For Lorre, it’s acting.

Don’t know how I got off on such a philosophical note there, but with 25 movies now under my belt, I’m ready to take on the next batch and make it to 50 and then cruise thru the 60s, 70s and early-80s til I hit 75 and from there, enjoy some true modern classics til I reach 100… at which point I will be glad this project is over, shake my head in amazement/wonder that I completed it, ask myself what the hell I was thinking and proceed to consume massive amounts of food and alcohol in celebration… or maybe I’ll just fly to Hawaii.