Deluge

Deluge (1933)

Runtime: 66 minutes

Directed by: Felix E. Feist

Starring: Peggy Shannon, Lois Wilson, Sidney Blackmer, Matt Moore, Fred Kohler

From: RKO

Messageboard chatter and a 4K video on YouTube inspired me to see this early disaster movie. Yes, they made those way back when; the discussion happened months ago-the movie was always on my mind to see eventually. It was released on Blu by Kino several years ago-more on that at the end-so not paying for that or paying for the streaming rental on Kino Now does sound rotten on my part. That said, some account on YouTube which doesn’t have that many views (moonflix, but you didn’t hear that from me) uploaded the movie in 4K so I was charitable & checked out the stream.

There are reasons why disaster movies spend time with the main players before the fit hit the shan. As this is only 66 minutes, you’re barely introduced to this world before the weather turns so awful that much of everything is destroyed and as far as a group of people in an area a little bit out of New York City know, no one else on Earth survived. Not unexpectedly-especially for a movie of its vintage-much of the subsequent runtime is spent with romantic entanglements, including some gross men who fight over young Peggy Shannon and one of them forces himself on her. Personally that wasn’t as interesting to me and I would have preferred seeing this ragtag group of people attempting to create normalcy again after the apocalypse.

Even with my personal preferences, this was still a good time. The destruction was fun (not a surprise that Republic purchased that footage so it could be used in several later serials) and after that was still some solid acting, with an ending that was more wistful and haunting than expected. It was an interesting curio that isn’t a massive commitment and for a long while was feared lost. In 1981 an Italian dubbed print was discovered; it was in the collection of… schlocky Italian director Luigi Cozzi, of all people. That was restored and played in various places. It wasn’t until 2016 that an English print was found, Lobster Films did the restoration work and Kino released it on Blu. I am glad something like this can easily be seen when there are corporate A-holes that delete films made for their platform off said platform to save a buck and the future of a network all about classic pictures is tenuous as best. However, that’s another topic for another time.