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Killers of the Sea (Grand National). Hero of this five-reel sport feature is one Wallace Caswell, captain of the fishing schooner Princess and constable of Panama City, Fla. Caswell. according to Lowell Thomas, whose commentary is dubbed into the silent film shot on board the Princess, conceived as a boy so trenchant a disdain for sharks, turtles, sawfish and other sea killers that upon reaching manhood he dedicated himself to slaughtering them singlehanded, using no other weapon than a fish knife.
Killers of the Sea shows Caswell wrestling and subduing a 12-ft. bottle-nosed killer whale, a gigantic snapping sea turtle, an octopus, a sawfish and a tiger shark. There are many repetitions of the dramatic moment when, spying some deep-sea enemy, Caswell, "The Man of Steel, G-Man of the Deep," rips off his breeches and dives to the attack, knife in teeth. Audiences will guess that some energetic harpooning of the monsters has preceded Caswell's scrimmages: the fish stay on the surface to be photographed in a manner fish seldom consent to unless submergence is impossible due to the fact that they are nine-tenths dead and full of air.
Highlight of the captain's combats is the one with the tigershark, photographed with a man-eater which appears to be dead. But the spirit of engaging fakery animating Killers of the Sea has a happier embodiment in the octopus sequence. This time ''the man of steel" rescues his buddy, a diver, bogged down by a devilfish, his airline severed by a turtle's bite. Caswell swims down several fathoms and dispatches the devilfish, slitting its ink sac with one blow of his trusty fish knife. Lowell Thomas explains that the captain's baldness is the result of a skull slash by a deep-sea monster, but makes no effort to analyze why the captain swims so awkwardly or why "a man of steel" should keep himself so plump. Killers of the Sea contains some really good shots of a white man and a Negro in a dory being towed and finally upset by a huge blackfish which they have harpooned.
Call It a Day (Warner) is an amiable adaptation of Dodie Smith's gentle little comedy about one spring day in the life of the Hilton family. In the class of dramaturgy which depends upon making much of trifles, Call It a Day is about the last possible refinement. Not only does nothing actually happen in the story but the fact that at its end the Hiltons are exactly where they were at its beginning constitutes its denouement. This is because, in the interim, each has been touched, lightly as by the warm March wind, by currents in life that invite or threaten change. Seventeen-year-old Catherine (Olivia de Havilland) has fallen in first love with the artist who is painting her portrait. Her brother Martin (Peter Willes) is interrupted in planning to run away from home by an invitation to dinner from the girl next door (Anita Louise). Roger Hilton (Ian Hunter), a diligent and prosperous accountant, has had a first-rate chance for extramarital adventure with an actress. Dorothy, his wife (Frieda Inescort), has received an equally alarming proposal from her best friend's brother, Frank Haines (Roland Young).