Tom Sawyer (1930)

I've never read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Judging by this film, I wouldn't be surprised if the producers hadn't either. It feels more like somebody skimmed the book, threw the script together from key scenes, and hoped that the novelty of it being a state-of-the-art talking picture would do the rest.

Tom Sawyer (Jackie Coogan) lives with his nagging Aunt Polly (Clara Blandick, aka Auntie Em from The Wizard of Oz), his cousin Mary (who mostly lays tables and dispenses Bible verses) and his obnoxious half-brother Sid. There's one scene where Tom throws an apple at Sid's face. That was a good scene.

The film plays out like a highlight reel of key chapters from the novel. There's one where Tom Sawyer is made to paint Aunt Polly's fence as punishment for stealing obnoxious Sid's stupid crabapples. 54 years later, Mr. Miyagi would do the same thing to Daniel-san in The Karate Kid. Maybe there was a deleted scene from that where Daniel stole Mr. Miyagi's crabapples too, and it had nothing to do with karate training. And what even is a crabapple? Is it like a normal apple, only with nippers and claws? Anyway, Tom, being the cheeky little scamp that he is, somehow cons his friends into painting the fence for him. And it feels like sixty minutes have passed but we realise we're only nine minutes in.

Then comes Tom getting whipped in class (charming), by taking the blame for new girl Becky Thatcher's torn book page. She falls for him, obviously. Nothing says romance like a public flogging from your teacher.

Tom later sneaks off to a graveyard with his friend Huckleberry Finn (Junior Durkin) in the dead of the night to find a cure for warts. Because that's where you'd look for such things apparently. However, they're not alone. Injun Joe, Muff Potter and Doctor Robinson are in the graveyard too - not to find a wart cure, but to dig up a body so that the doctor can study it. During their grave-robbing proceedings, Injun Joe and Doctor Robinson get into an argument, Joe stabs the doctor with Muff's knife. Muff, who is too drunk to know what they hell is happening, is framed for the murder by Injun Joe. Tom and Huck witness it all, and swear not to speak of it again. Until, well, they do.

Eventually, Muff goes on trial. The townsfolk are convinced he's guilty and the trial is just a formality. Muff probably believes he's guilty too, since he barely knows what day it is, let alone whether he actually killed someone. But Tom, racked with guilt and a sense of decency, takes the stand, tells the truth, and points his finger squarely at the true murderer - Injun Joe. Joe leaps out of a window, and flees to a secret hiding place. Never to be found again. Well, until he does get found again.

And then we have a cave scene. Tom and Becky, off on a riverboat trip, sneak away to explore a cave. Their candles burn low, Becky panics, and in the most pants-wetting scene of the entire seven hours of this movie, in walks Injun Joe, being very much alive and very much creepy. Fortunately, the kids manage to make their escape through an opening, and they live happily ever after. The cave gets sealed to prevent other kids deciding to go spelunking. As Joe was still in it, and neither Tom or Becky felt the need to alert anyone of this, it's possibly a case of accidental manslaughter. But oh well, Injun Joe's a bad 'un. He probably deserved it.

Oh, and somewhere amongst all of this, there's the pirate escapade. Tom, Huck, and their friend Joe Harper run away to play make-believe pirates, go missing for a few days, and the town assumes they've drowned. A funeral is held. Naturally, the kids turn up halfway through it, beaming as they gatecrash their own eulogies. Hilarious. Unless you were their grieving family, I guess.

Yes, reading this back, spoilers and all (maybe I need to warn of those beforehand), it sounds dramatic. Murder! Pirates! Caves! Whippings! Fence Painting! But somehow it all plays out with the energy of a long afternoon nap. There's no urgency. No tension. Just whimsical childhood misadventures with a laid-back tone. It's just Tom and his friends mischief-making and getting themselves into charming scrapes.

A colour remake came out just a few years later, by which point people had learned how to act a bit more naturally and films with sound weren't just a novelty. As a result, this 1930 version quickly became obsolete, a mostly forgotten museum piece of early talkies.

That apple-to-Sid's-face moment? Deserved on Oscar. And Jackie Coogan's career saw him later become Uncle Fester in The Addams Family.