Manhattan Madness

Steve O'Dare, a young New Yorker who has gone off to Wyoming to be a cowboy, returns to New York to sell some cattle. He bores his friends with tales of the exciting Western life, so they plot to trick him with a mock abduction. But although Steve falls for the gag, he ends up turning the tables on his friends.

This film actually belongs to Jewel Carmen, her character not given a name, but she certainly has the measure of the show-off "Steve" (Douglas Fairbanks). He plays a cowboy who returns to the Big Apple from his Nevada home and, unimpressed with their big, but sterile, city regales everyone with his tales of hide and horses. They decide to enact their revenge with a mock kidnap plot, but soon they begin to regret it! There's a fun chemistry between Fairbanks and Carmen, but the story is a little lacklustre and the comedy a bit too much on the slapstick side for my liking. The polished production is great, though - the lighting and editing remarkable for the time, and there is some nice location photography from both locations, but 50 minutes is too long for the rather over-stretched story. One for fans to enjoy, I think - otherwise a bit bland.