A Caravana da Morte

"Remember Last Night?" is a movie relic from an era when Hollywood stars held a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. (in this case, MANY drinks...)

Director James Whale (best remembered for "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein") opens his film with the wildest alcohol-drenched party ever put on celluloid. The plot thickens the next morning when one of the partygoers is found dead..and no one can recall anything about the previous evening (hence the title of the movie!) Robert Young and Constance Cummings star as the upper-class ringleaders of the pickled partiers with Edward Arnold playing the frustrated detective trying to solve the case.

Poking fun at excessive drinking would never fly in today's politically correct world, but in 1935 James Whale pulled it off flawlessly!

This odd item is sandwiched chronically between two of my favorites within their genres: It came right after my favorite horror movie, "Bride of Frankenstein" (to which its lead character alludes.) And it was right before my very favorite musical, Whale's heartbreaking "Show Boat." It has a great cast. Conusance Cummings, whom I saw on Broadway four decades later in a Tony-winning role in "Wings," is a delight. Robert Young is not the husband I'd see her with but he's fine. Edward Arnold, the friend who's called in to solve a murder or two, is one of my favorites. Jack La Rue is handsome and mysterious as a chauffeur and Arthur Treacher is very funny as the butler.

The movie captures Jazz Age rich people's lives better than almost any other I can think of. "The Wild Party" has it too. Young and Cummings drive a gorgeous Bugatti. They resemble the couple in "Topper" to some degree but they're more dissolute; the script pushes their charm on us less. It's all Champagne, furs, swimming pools, antiques, and lots of flirtation with danger.

When I saw the opening credits announcing "A James Whale Production," I thought - yes, there will probably be outsized and grotesque sets, just like in Frankenstein. I wasn't mistaken. The weird decor of the house and restaurant where the action takes place is a movie in itself. The entire film plays like one big in-joke, like the sorts of things film studios put together to show to employees at Christmas parties.

But that doesn't mean this movie isn't funny, and enjoyable. The two lead characters are the boozy, over the top kind that you know are going to get into more trouble than they can handle. To me, they were sort of a combination of Nick and Nora Charles, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Their wild party was one of the wildest you'll ever see on film, and no nudity or foul language, either. Of course, there is the matter of that really tasteless, racist bit at the party. I suppose in 1935 some would have considered that funny, but it is painful to watch.

I really liked Constance Cummings. The only other thing I've seen her in is Blythe Spirit. She was very good here in a screwball mode, and she was cute and perky without being obnoxious about it. Robert Young was winning as her not very much more sober and serious husband. The whole mystery with all the suspects in one house thing was pretty silly, but I really think it was supposed to be. This film is to be viewed with tongue in cheek. It's a joke, and a funny one. It has all the stock characters you would expect to find in such an old-fashioned mystery - the rich and careless, the hardbitten law, the ex-con and suspicious (but innocent) servants, and that great, supercilious, snooty butler. Arthur Treacher was the master of that genre. I thought it was hilarious the way he made all those snide comments whenever he turned his head from his employers. The dialog is really very funny, and goes by fast, but not too fast.

I thought the funniest scene by far was where the hero is racing his car to get home, and he almost collides with a truck at a road construction site. The truck driver lets loose a stream of curses, without actually uttering any four-letter words. And listen carefully for the very last thing he says -- well, I won't give it away -- it caps the whole scene and makes it even funnier.

1935's "Remember Last Night?" was James Whale's follow-up to "Bride of Frankenstein," adapted from a story called "Hangover Murders." The wonderful cast is led by Robert Young and Constance Cummings, playing Tony and Carlotta Milford, who spend their anniversary with friends on an elaborate drinking orgy that extends all across town. Morning finds them awakening in the home of Vic Huling (George Meeker), only to discover their host in his bed, not asleep but dead. Tony decides to call in his friend Danny Harrison (top billed Edward Arnold) to perform a quiet investigation without any police interference, since everyone involved are friends and no one can recall the events of last evening's debauchery. In his usual role as long-suffering retainer, Arthur Treacher gets to show his contempt for their wild drunkenness, stealing every scene with his priceless asides. Gustav von Seyffertitz ("Son of Frankenstein") provides an eerie sequence as a mesmerist who puts everyone into a hypnotic state to ferret out the killer, unsuccessfully. Frank Reicher plays the coroner, and E. E. Clive his photographer, begging for the corpse to be moved so he can get a clearer shot on the bed! For all Whale's comic swipes at the degradation of the 'idle rich,' his cast makes it difficult to actually dislike them; certainly both Robert Young and Constance Cummings can boast a chemistry that compares with William Powell and Myrna Loy. Young had debuted opposite Bela Lugosi in 1931's "The Black Camel," and later played Boris Karloff's son in "The Guilty Generation," while the exceptionally lovely Constance (forever making charming faces at her supportive husband) had played opposite Karloff in "The Criminal Code," "Behind the Mask," and "The Guilty Generation" (where she played Young's soon-to-be wife). Were it not for her dual roles opposite Harold Lloyd in 1932's "Movie Crazy" (she calls him 'trouble'), I would have to regard this film as her finest in Hollywood, which she would soon abandon for England, on the heels of her 1933 marriage to screenwriter Benn W. Levy, who not only contributed to this script but also two previous Whale features, "Waterloo Bridge" and "The Old Dark House." Interestingly, Levy's only credit as director, 1932's British "Lord Camber's Ladies," was also the only film that Alfred Hitchcock produced but did not direct.

When a man is found murdered after a night of carousing, a husband and wife set out to solve the crime in "Remember Last Night," a 1935 film directed by James Whale and starring Robert Young and Constance Cummings. They certainly did a lot of partying in the '30s, but the partying in this film is on a new level. Everyone is so drunk that the next morning, no one can remember a thing about what happened the night before and how one of their friends ended up dead.

"Remember Last Night" is along the lines of the Thin Man (with more booze, if you can believe it), "Fast and Loose," "Star of Midnight," etc. - the lighthearted man-woman crime-solving genre so popular in the '30s. What sets this one apart is the shameless drunkenness, which raises drinking to a new art form, and an appalling display of people wearing blackface masks and talking jive in one part of the movie.

Constance Cummings and Robert Young play the couple, and they're delightful. Cummings is beautiful, sophisticated, and sparkles as the wife. An accomplished stage actress who lived to be 95, Cummings appeared as Mary Tyrone to Olivier's James in an acclaimed "Long Day's Journey into Night" and in her seventies toured the country in "Wings," about a stroke victim. Here she is young and dazzling. Robert Young does very well in a role normally played by Robert Montgomery or William Powell - he's younger, and gives the part just the right playful touch. He lived to be 91, so maybe there was something in whatever passed for booze in the movie. Edward Arnold, Reginald Denny, and Arthur Treacher provide solid support.

This is a somewhat convoluted mystery - it was hard to follow even being sober, so just think what the characters went through. If you can get into the spirit of it (pardon the pun), it's fun, and as well, it's a great commentary on the times - and how they have changed.