PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 935

Madam Satan 1930 Screenplay by Jeanie MacPherson with dialog by Gladys Unger and Elsie Janis, directed by Cecil B DeMille.

A romantic musical comedy that had scenes filmed in Multicolor. Sadly the color scenes set in the Zeppelin only exist in B&W. It was the most expensive film made at Metro Goldwyn Mayer that year.

That's DeMille next to Kay Johnson, the lady on the left is screenwriter Jeanie MacPherson. It's DeMille's only musical and came out at a time when the public had started to lose interest in them. It was a box office failure that lost $390K, that's over $7,000,000 in 2023 dollars. DeMille had left Paramount for a better deal at MGM. He made three pictures there and two of them went bust at the box office. He went back to Paramount.

Kay Johnson plays Angela Brooks and Reginald Denny plays her husband Bob. Early one morning Bob comes home drunk with his pal Jimmy, played by Roland Young. Angela finds out from the newspaper that he'd been arrested and appeared in Night Court with his wife and Jimmy. Bob tries to convince Angela that "Mrs Brooks" was really Jimmy's wife Trixie, played by Lillian Roth. It's not a convincing story and Angela knows that Bob is cheating on her.

After Bob sleeps the day away the couple get into a fight because he's forgotten that they were supposed to go to the theater. They split up and Bob leaves the house. Angela regrets the split and decides to fight for her hubby. Her maid sings her a song about fighting for her husband. Angela tells Jimmy she's like to spend the night with him and Trixie, knowing all too well that they aren't married. She follows them home and puts them on the spot. Bob appears and they fool him into thinking that Trixie was out and Jimmy was there with a new girlfriend.

Jimmy has a costume party on a zeppelin. There's a nice model of the zeppelin and mooring tower. The zeppelin has large sets and plenty of great costumes.

There's a floor show with about as many performers as guests.

Angela makes an appearance in her Madam Satan costume and wows the men. Bob forgets Trixie quickly and goes after Madam Satan. There's some running about and funny dialog. Then things take a turn, a giant electrical storm comes up and detaches the zeppelin from the mooring tower. Now it's a disaster movie. The zeppelin is tossed about, the guest parachute to safety and only Bob manages to get himself hurt. Things get back to what ever normal is among the rich and the movie is over.

I enjoyed parts of the movie. The banter among the main characters is entertaining, Angela putting Jimmy on the spot is fun, the zeppelin model is great, the costumes are wild. I didn't care for the musical numbers. the singing is high pitched and the words are hard to understand. I did like the big dance routine on the zeppelin even though it's a bit of a goofy thing. I'd recommend seeing it, it's unusual and that's a plus. I doubt I'd need to see it again so I don't need a DVD of it. That's one less thing to store.

Eat Brains Love 2019 Based on the novel Eat, Brains, Love by Jeff Hart, screenplay by Mike Hero and David Strauss, directed by Rodman Flender. Rodman has directed very few films, I've only seen a couple, Leprechaun 2, Idle Hands, and enjoyed those. He mostly directs TV episodes, most of which I've also not seen.

Jake and Amanda are in school when they turn zombie and eat their classmates. The zombie plague is only transmitted sexually. The victim of the disease only appears as a zombie when stressed or hungry. They look normal the rest of the time. Zombie's have remarkable recuperative powers.

The government is hunting zombies so the couple go on the run. With the help of a zombie lesbian couple they quickly adapt to their new lifestyle. The lesbians have a shopping list consisting of local sex offenders. No one will miss those victims. One of the zombie hunters is a psychic called Cass. She develops a thing for Jake over the movie and eventually gives up the zombie hunting. Alastaire is Cass's boss, he's been experimenting on zombie's turning them into controlled slaves.

There's a good bit of gore that isn't too excessive, it goes well with the humorous tone of the script. It's briskly paced and mostly enjoyable. Not sure I'd need to see it again, I'm not going to get the Blu-ray.

Follow The Fleet 1936

Follow The Fleet 1936 Written by Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor, additional dialogue by Lew Lipton, directed by Mark Sandrich.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were a song and dance team who fell out when she turned down his marriage proposal. He went into the Navy and when they meet again she's singing in a 10 cent a dance night club. He gets her fired from that, reneges on a promise to get her a better job, then screws up her chance in an audition she set up. Randolph Scott is Fred's ship mate and he's a woman in every port sort of guy.

There's more story about Ginger and her sister, played by Harriet Hillard. Harriett was later to Ozzie's wife in The Adventures Of Ozzie and Harriet. Here she wants to refurbish her late father's ship. She needs some cash or they lose the ship. Fred and Ginger puts on a show and he goes AWOL to be there. Eventually it all works out for the most part.

Pretty contrived and kind of annoying to me. I didn't care that much about the characters. The jokes aren't very funny and I wasn't that interested in most of the musical numbers. Ages ago I found the DVD cheap and picked it up. I'll probably keep it though I don't have much reason to.

Silly Billies 1936

Silly Billies 1936 Story by Thomas Lennon and Fred Guiol, screenplay by Al Boasberg and Jack Townley, directed by Fred Guiol. A period peace with the fellows in the 1840s.

Robert Woolsey and Bert Wheeler are dentists, they set up in a town the day before all the citizens leave for the California gold rush in a wagon train. The guys overhear the local scumbag plot to wipe out the wagon train with the help of a neighboring tribe. The local scumbag is the wagon train's scout. He plans to leave the wagon train and let the tribe attack, once the new settlers are wiped out, they split the loot with the tribe.

Wheeler and Woolsey ride out to tell the wagon train but they get framed for the plot by an unfortunate slip of Woolsey's tongue. There's plenty of running about and cowboy movie stuff going on but they do save the citizens. There are jokes, some are fairly good, some not. Sadly the movie is often marred by the tired old racial stereotypes depicting Native Americans. It's the 22nd film the guys made together in 8 years, I'm including the shorts they made together, and they still have 3 more to go before Woolsey passes away in 1938.

Kentucky Kernels 1934

Kentucky Kernels 1934 Screenplay by Lee Marcus and HN Swanson, directed by George Stevens with an assist from Jean Yarbrough.

Robert Woolsey is the Great Elmer and Bert Wheeler is Willie, they're a couple of out of work magicians. They help a guy adopt a kid, Spanky McFarland plays Spanky, you might know him from the Little Rascals. The guy elopes and The Great Elmer and company get stuck with Spanky. Turns out he's a genial little fellow who likes breaking windows.

Mary Carisle, Noah Beery, Margaret Dumont and Willie Best appear. I can't think of a time when Willie Best appearing in a film didn't cheer me up. Sadly not all of his roles are up to his talent, here he's got a good size part and plenty of stuff to do. Bob Hope called Willie the "best actor I know" while working with him on The Ghost Breakers.

Spanky inherits some money and the boys go along to Kentucky where they get into a family feud with the Wakefields. There's plenty of running about and yelling with a bit of romance and a lot of gun shooting near the end. It all turns out well for the boys in the end. Another fun film.

Hips, Hips, Hooray 1934

Hips, Hips, Hooray 1934 Screenplay by Bert Kalmar, Edward Kaufman and Harry Ruby, directed by Mark Sandrich.

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey are cosmetic salesman hawking their wares on the street. They get involved with a cosmetic company who have a musical radio show with plenty of pretty dancers.

The boys get up a fund raiser for this poor girl, she has no clothes. That's Doris McMahon in her pre-code costume. You don't see her this closeup in the movie, she appears way in the background. Probably for the best, no use inflaming the youth of the day with a flash of bare hip.

Bert and Robert misplace some company securities and their manager steals them. Now the boys are in trouble with the law and they must use all their limited brain power to get themselves out of this pickle. They decide to get into a car race. That's a good place to keep a low profile.

Eventually things get sorted out with gags and musical numbers. Thelma Todd and Dorothy Lee provide some romance, there's plenty of action once the car racing starts, and there's a happy ending for the guys. Still enjoying the guy's films and there still are several to go.

Diplomaniacs 1933

Diplomaniacs 1933 Story by Joseph L Mankiewicz, screenplay by Joseph L Mankiewicz and Henry Meyers, directed by William A Seiter. It's executive producer was Merian C Cooper and the associate producer was Sam Jaffe.

Like most of the Wheeler and Woolsey films it's available on DVD from the Warner Brothers Archives. There's a 4 disc set with 9 films, a 3 disc set with 6 films, and 8 single discs with a film on each. This is the 12th of the 22 feature pictures that W&W made together. They made a few shorts together and each made a few solo films.

Robert Wheeler and Bert Woolsey are barbers on a Native American reservation where there's little business. The oil rich tribe gives the guys a million dollars each and sends them to a peace conference in Europe. It makes little sense but there you go. It's about as absurd as their last picture So This Is Africa.

They sail to Europe and cause chaos aboard ship and later at the conference. Some rival governments and a dirty arms dealer want to see the peace conference fail so they try gumming up the works. Thankfully typical dirty tricks don't work so well on our boys. Marjorie White and Phyllis Barry are the romantic interests, they fall hard for the boys. I know, absurd. Edgar Kennedy is the chairman of the conference. Hugh Herbert is Chow-Chow, he's credited as Chinaman in the films credits.

The movie is of the times and filled with stereotypes of all sorts. While I'm not happy to see the stereotypes, I can put them in the context of their time. It's politically incorrect for the modern day but not so much in 1933. Near the end of the film a bomb is tossed into the conference and the explosion gives everyone in the room blackface, then there's a minstrel show style song and dance number called No More War. You may say "Wow" but it turns out to be a good song with the right message. I'm not always a big fan of the musical numbers but this film has some of their best work.

I read on the IMDb that the film's been preserved by the Library of Congress. That's a good thing, we need these sorts of films to remind ourselves of what we were like in the past. I'm also glad they put it on disc so we can still enjoy one of Wheeler and Woolsey's better films.

So This Is Africa 1933

So This Is Africa 1933 Screenplay by Norman Krasna and direction by Edward F Cline. It's the boys only comedy for Columbia Pictures and it's a goofy bit of business.

Robert Wheeler and Bert Woolsey play vaudevillians with a lion act. They're broke, the lions are hungry and the hotel is ready to toss them out for not paying their bill. Across town Ultimate Pictures is having a big meeting about their latest blunder. The big man in charge has hired Mrs Johnson Martini, a naturalist with African expertise, to film an animal picture in Africa. They've just learned she's afraid of animals and the studio is in a uproar. I suspect that Mrs Johnson Martini refers to the travelers and film makers, Osa and Martin Johnson.

The studio hits upon the idea of getting W&W's tame lions. They'll send them to Africa with Mrs Martini and make their film. It's a bonkers idea that seems to have been forgotten once the group gets to Africa. Mrs Martini seems set on wooing Robert. Bert gets picked up while sleepwalking. Literally, Tarzana picks him up in his night shirt and swings him through the trees to her tree house.

Wheeler and Woolsey are reunited just as the Amazon's arrive. There's a whole tribe of them and they're set on romance. Luckily for our guys a whole tribe of Tarzan lookalikes show up for the annual grab a bride ritual. The movie ends with the W&W in the village, married with children. 

It's a pretty wacky film with some good jokes and some bad. It's about average for their films, despite the dumb studio plot line. It's a wonder they're still in business with that level of intelligence. It's not available on DVD for some reason but you can find it on YouTube in the link above. 

Girl Crazy 1932

Girl Crazy 1932 Screenplay by Walter DeLeon, Herman J Mankiewicz, Eddie Welsh and Tim Whelan, directed by William A Seiter. It's based on the 1930 play of the same name by Guy Bolton and John McGowan. Guy Bolton had worked with PG Wodehouse on a number of plays in the 1920s. I read the movie wasn't much like the play.

 

Three songs from the play, written by George and Ira Gershwin, were used in the movie. Two are familiar to me, Bidin' My Time and I Got Rhythm. The latter was introduced in the play by Ethel Merman. Ginger Rogers was the star of the play. There was a 1943 adaptation of the play with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

  

Bert Wheeler is a cab driver, he's driving Robert Woolsey across the California desert to a remote gambling place in a tiny town. Stanley Fields is the local thug, he's been killing the sheriffs as they've been hired. He runs the gambling and he wants to put the saloon Robert has come to work at out of business. Poor Bert gets signed up to be the new sheriff. Robert tries to keep him from getting killed, after helping get him elected. He wants to keep Stanley from getting control of the saloon.

 

Besides too much singing, there's some knockabout shenanigans, some romance, and the usual sort of things one would expect in a Wheeler and Woolsey film. They don't change their style much in their run. The RKO records say it lost $150,000, the film cost $532,000 and the box office was $555,000. I don't know what the theaters got out of the box office in those days but I could guess. I enjoyed the running about and speeded up some of the songs.

Dixiana 1930

Dixiana 1930 Story by Anne Caldwell, script by Luther Reed, directed by Luther Reed. Another film partially filmed in two strip Technicolor. They shot the last twenty minutes in Technicolor but it was thought lost until 1988 when the sequence was found and restored to the film. Max Steiner received his first credit for orchestration.

The third film for Wheeler and Woolsey still doesn't bill them as a team. This time the boys are circus performers in the antebellum south. Wheeler and Wolsey are partners in an act with Dixiana. She decides to leave the circus to marry the son of a rich plantation owner and they tag along to see the wedding.

The guys reveal they are circus folk and that goes down with the rich parents not at all. A big hubbub happens and the trio return to New Orleans. Unable to get their old jobs back Dixiana takes a job in a music hall run by a crooked scumbag. He wants to use Dixiana to ruin the rich family who spurned her, not to help her out but to make money for himself. Eventually it all works out.

I got a laugh or two, Wheeler and Woolsey have some better jokes and there's plenty of running about and yelling. You can see the film, click the link above.

The Cuckoos 1930

The Cuckoos 1930 It's based on a 1926 Broadway musical called The Ramblers by Guy Bolton, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. It was adapted for the screen by Cyrus Wood, there's a uncredited credit for Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, it was directed by Paul Sloane.

Some of the Wheeler and Woolsey films have been collected into 2 sets of DVDs, one with 9 films and the other with 6 films, the rest are released as single DVDs. The films in the sets aren't in any chronological order.

Wheeler and Woolsey are in Mexico, hanging around a casino resort. They run afoul of the local gypsies. Wheeler has fallen for a young gypsy woman called Anita. Troublesome, as the head man in the gypsy camp wants her for his bride. Anita isn't interested in the gypsy at all but he's a scumbag who isn't going to take no for an answer. Another woman at the casino, Ruth, is in love with an aviator named Billy. Ruth's aunt wants her to marry a creep called The Baron. Spurned, the Baron and the gypsies team up for a spot of kidnapping.

Wheeler and Woolsey have to come to the rescue, wading through one song after another. The guys get top billing after the success of Rio Rita and they do get more screen time. The songs are about as uninteresting to me as Rio Rita. I don't watch the films for the music. Like Rio Rita parts of the film are filmed in two strip Technicolor. The copies on the Warner Archive sets are usually pretty good. The jokes are about the same as the last movie. I got a few giggles and one time I laughed out loud.