Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Michael_Elliott The Runaway Bride (1930)* 1/2 (out of 4) Early talkie has Mary Gray (Mary Astor) eloping with Richard Mercer (David Newell) but as the two are looking over their new apartment she realizes that she's made a horrible mistake. Richard locks her up in the apartment and leaves her when later a detective comes pounding on the door. He finally gets in and for some reason at the same time a criminal climbs into the window and kills him. Fearing what to do, Mary gives the maid some cash in exchange for an employment card where Mary goes to hide as a cook for a rich man (Lloyd Hughes) but soon gangsters come after her.THE RUNAWAY BRIDE is a really, really awful movie that is so incredibly bad that you can't help but be caught up in how bad it is. If you're a fan of these early talkies then you already know that more times than not the director and cast members were more concerned about the voices getting recorded than anything else. That's certainly the case here because there's absolutely no style to mention and it's clear that director Donald Crisp was just filming scenes without putting too much logical sense into them. As you can tell from my plot description, the story is about as stupid as you can get and I only revealed half of it! The first ten minutes of this movie are downright insane as one illogical thing after another happens. For starters, why does Mary lie to the detective when he comes to the door? Why does she really need to run? What did she see in this guy to begin with? Why are the gangsters so stupid? There are so many logical issues with this movie that you can't help but think they weren't working off of a screenplay and if this was from an actual screenplay, you've gotta wonder what powder was going around RKO at the time. The story is so insane that it actually keeps you glued to the screen just so you can see how much worse it gets.Astor, as you'd expect, is good in her role but you somewhat see her struggling to make anything out of the character because she has nothing to work with. Hughes is good in his role as is Paul Hurst as the cop trying to figure everything out. Sadly, the actors just can't overcome this horrid screenplay and in the end THE RUNAWAY BRIDE really is one of the worst films from this period.

MartinHafer Wow...this is one of the strangest first half hours of any film I have ever seen. Believe it or not, the first 15 minutes of the film have just about NOTHING to do with where the film goes next--and in the process, it strains credibility WAAAY past the breaking point! The film begins with Mary Astor being driven by a fiancé who is an irresponsible thrill-seeker. Again and again, he nearly gets them killed by his reckless and super-high speed driving. Yet, despite this, she STILL plans on marrying the jerk--which irritated me quite a bit.Eventually, Mary starts to have doubts about following through with the marriage--but his driving (oddly) didn't seem to be the final straw. Here is where things get really, really contrived--and rather crazy!! The fiancé steps out of the room they rented and Mary somehow gets locked in the place. In the meantime, a detective stops by and demands to be let in--and she lies that she's not dressed when all she really needed to say was she couldn't get out of the room! And, by the way, did he stop by and why did she lie?! This made no sense--nor did it make sense when, out of the blue, a criminal climbs into the room between the time the detective knocks on the door and before he returns with a pass key!! What are the odds?!? And, in the process, the criminal shoots a cop who is chasing him!!! So, Mary is locked in a room, a detective stops by BEFORE there is a crime committed, a real crime is then committed and the criminal chooses this particular room for a hideout, the crook shoots and kills another cop before he is also shot dead, but before dying he hides the loot in Mary's bag!!!! If all this doesn't sound utterly ridiculous, it gets worse! After the detective leaves but before he returns with the pass key, the maid arrives and lets Mary out of the room. Now what would any SANE person do? Well, according to this film, you pay the maid a fortune (for 1930) and take a job the maid was going to take in another part of town--going undercover to avoid the cops even though you'd done NOTHING (other than appear in a bad film). All this mess involving the police occurred in only about eight minutes in the film!! The next portion of the film is like yet another film crammed into one very, very busy movie. Mary is now a cook and the bachelor for whom she is working is very taken by her--and it's PAINFULLY obvious that they will fall in love by the end of the film. Why couldn't they have just kept the first portion of the film with the irresponsible fiancé and this section where she becomes the cook for this swell guy? After all, the intervening portion is just too goofy and stupid...and really undoes the entire film. Overall, the impact is very poor--and a movie that isn't really worth your time unless you LIKE 3rd rate films with occasionally bad sound (which was not terribly uncommon for an early talking picture). It's a bad film for so many reasons...but rarely is it boring!!

calvinnme ...one, of course, is Mary Astor in a very early role that she handles quite well in spite of the fact that the plot, the direction, and all of her male costars are so wooden that you could probably build a small bonfire out of the lot of them. Mary's good girl looks and natural handling of dialogue cause her seem like the only thing three dimensional on the screen, with one exception.That exception would be the second reason to watch this film, and the only other female in the cast. For you precode fans out there, look really close at the frumpy seemingly dense Clara, the maid at the sea-side resort - that's Natalie Moorhead looking incredibly unglamorous considering all of her femme fatale appearances in movies like "The Office Wife".As for the rest of it all I can say is it is ponderously bad. The jist of the plot is that Mary (Mary Astor) is a society girl that has eloped with one of her society crowd only to find out that, after they have registered as man and wife in a seaside hotel but before they actually get married, that her potential husband seems to think that a man's place is in a deck chair - he has no desire to work at all. She changes her mind about the marriage. Her fiancé may be a lay-about but he apparently also has some caveman in him too. He locks her in the hotel room while he goes to find a minister, ignoring her wishes. While she is trying to find a way to escape, her room is invaded first by a mortally wounded jewel thief and then by the cops that think that Mary must be part of the gang that planned the caper.The police sergeant is a real bully and as for his police work, he makes Barney Fife look like Sherlock Holmes. He seems to really enjoy pushing around women when he isn't having trouble reciting his lines. When he comes across the real bad guys, he practically tips his hat to them - actually I think he does tip his hat to them.This is real tough sledding to get through, and only the performances of the two female players distinguish it. Stagey beyond belief and with acting technique left over from the silent era, I guess it's almost a toss-up as to whether or not it's worth your time.

tmpj I didn't see this film from the beginning. If you miss the first few minutes of most films of this vintage, you're lost from then on. This film is worth watching, not because it is a good film or has a good cast. The only one worth seeing here is Mary Astor, and she's a far cry from her Brigid O'Shaugnessey days still to come. This film is worth watching from a filmmakers' vantage point. The plots and characters are virtually negligible. However, Leo Tover's expressionistic photography and angles are exceptional for the period. There are lots of dark images a la Welles ( though still a few years prior to his appearance). The images are silhouetted in this pre-Citizen Kane vehicle, and there is even an early attempt at 'deep focus', which was said to be fathered by Toland, but Tover stops just short of deep focus 1930 in several scenes. The situations are somewhat steamy...there's one scene where the villains are looking for loot that's worth $80,000. Astor has to stand for an off screen frisk at the hands of these desperate men, and the result also suggests that the frisk is full of sex, with the moans and groans and Astor's pleadings off screen suggesting that which cannot be judged otherwise. Not a thrilling movie, nor necessarily a great watch. But viewing can give you insights into where movies were headed as of 1930. Artistically, not a great watch; technologically a worthwhile and informative watch.