It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A Brilliant Conflict

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Bickering kids. lots of running up and down stairs. Pa Wallace goes off to his lodge meeting, and it took 15 minutes just for that to happene. He meets some out of towners, and the Wallaces invest in a gold mine...What could go wrong ?? Lots of loud yelling, although talkies had been around for six years already. Ma Wallace is Lucille Gleason, real life wife of stumbling, bumbling detective James Gleason in so many detective stories. The middle part of the film really drags on with nothingness ... while we wait to see what happens with the gold mines. Directed by Roland Reed... he only directed SEVEN films... one in the 1920s, four in the 1930s, one in the 1940s, and one in the 1950s. How odd. and this is from Chesterfield Pictures... they were only around for twelve years, but put out TONS of films. Sound and picture quality are pretty terrible. If there's a good copy somewhere, it could use a restoration. There are a couple of funny bits -- all of Pa's lodge costumes. Some clever jokes. All done in 70 minutes.

Poverty Row studio Chesterfield Productions went out of business after this film was released. And typically it was a remake of another film In The Money that was done three years earlier.But these minor studios occasionally came up with some decent films and Red Lights Ahead was one of them. It has horrible production values, but the cast gave good performances led by Andy Clyde who made a lot of money in the junk business.Turns out he's going to need it. He's got himself nothing but junk in the way of grandchildren. Ann Doran, Paula Stone, Ben Alexander, and Frank Coghlan are four prize packages who are four millstones around the neck of Clyde's daughter Lucille Gleason. Her husband Roger Imhof is a decent sort who works hard and his big pleasure is the Order of the Whales Lodge.And Imhoff sees a golden opportunity in gold mine stock that the visiting Grand Harpoon of the lodge Sam Flint and his young associate future cowboy star Jack Randall are selling. Randall has been dating Stone and has been laying the ground work for Flint to come in and hook Imhoff.The kids see a path to easy money to continue their wastrel lives and urge father to buy. It takes Clyde to straighten the whole mess out in the end.A major studio probably could have done more with this film, but it still holds up well as good entertainment and is quite the advertisement for hard work and thrift. And one something looks too good to be true, it probably isn't.

My dislike for this movie isn't because the story plays like a sitcom--after all, it's a simple B-movie with modest pretenses. What bothered me were the terrible characters--they were simply awful in their one-dimensionality. In addition, they aren't particularly likable--and it makes for tough viewing.The film begins in a household where everyone is supposed to be kooky. However, they really come off as self-involved idiots--and every one of the grown children in this home needed to be slapped and told to get a job! What a bunch of lazy jerks---I was ready to turn off the film ten minutes into the picture! The plot involves Dad getting a business opportunity to strike it rich by investing in a gold mine. However, it's just too good to be true and the promises of almost instant wealth are obviously a scam to anyone with half a brain--unfortunately, he, his wife and kids all lack that half a brain. So, it's up to Grandpa (Andy Clyde) to straighten things out for his idiot brood. Overall, the film is barely competent and a time-waster--thanks to a script written by a 9 year-old squirrel.

This slight comedy looks at the Wallace household, weakly governed by a genial old fool (Roger Imhof) who takes pride in serving as his fraternal lodge doorman. His many offspring are a mildly eccentric, self-absorbed lot. The script dwells on their trivial tribulations (and chucks in some unexpected digs at spiritualism.) Just as one gets comfortable with the characters, the writers inject the creaky cliché of having the clan falsely believe they've come into a fortune. Non-hilarity ensues, and the preposterous denouement sours whatever goodwill the actors have generated.RED LIGHTS is not unwatchable, but I question if even the cast's descendants would sit thru it twice.