A Caravana da Morte

It's a wild party all right, with a lot of content that would curl the hair of the average movie- goer nowadays. While we in the 21st Century have been brutalized to boredom by the sight of a person's entrails being blown via shotgun blast onto the walls like some kind of macabre Rorshach, these folks would have been mortified at such a sight. But abuse people? While mid-party, even before the first piece of significant action, we are treated to profligate drinking, both individual and group (You have to see this to believe it.), impaired driving, racism (The most embarrassing and shamefacedly tacky minstrel-take-off I've ever seen!), vandalism, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest and dangerous driving.

Notwithstanding, the movie is an instructive social exhibit of a time when, during the depth of the worst depression in history, these brutes marauded carelessly while the world burned around them. Never has a house staff been so clearly cast as in utter disgust of their employer's very existence.

Overall, a terrific example of its time. Fun, too, even if it's darn near too nasty to live.

"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!

Louis B. Mayer famously insulted Robert Young by saying he had no sex appeal, but when you watch his movies, it seems like the casting offices didn't take Mr. Mayer's criticisms to heart. Bob almost always had a romance in his movies, and he certainly kissed a lot of leading ladies! Take Remember Last Night: the first shot of the movie is him kissing Constance Cummings. They break and she smirks as she says, "Very good technique. Not at all like a husband." Bob grins and responds, "We aim to please." I hope Louis B. Mayer's silly little insult didn't hurt his feelings, since he continually proved him wrong.

The start of the movie shows how frivolous a bunch of rich party guests are. Robert Young bowls with champagne glasses as pins, Arthur Treacher's tuxedo shirt is used to keep score, and the incredibly drunken guests drive themselves from venue to venue so the fun will never end. There's an incredibly offensive sequence when all the guests dress up in blackface, but you can realize they're supposed to be rotten people.

They're also supposed to be stupid people, as they cluelessly bumble around the house the next morning with terrible hangovers. Constance asks, "Is that my foot?" and when Bob's robe gets wet, she tells him to change lest he get "hydrophobia." In the aftermath of the party, they discover one of their friends has been murdered. Detective Edward Arnold and his incompetent sidekick Edward Brophy are called out on the case, and everyone becomes a suspect, however rich, frivolous, and inept they seem.

This is a pretty entertaining movie, if you can realize it was made in 1935 and whatever jokes are cringeworthy were merely meant to show how silly the main characters were. If you're not in the mood for something like this, you can pop in another Robert Young movie, since he played a rich playboy in dozens of them.

DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. During the hypnosis scene, the spinning image will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

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.

Despite its mixed critical reception and box-office failure (when it premiered at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, a place which I passed on several occasions while I was there a few months ago), this is one of director James Whale's favorites among his own films. It's a cross between screwball comedy and murder mystery and plays almost like a zanier version of THE THIN MAN (1934).

The first 20 minutes are totally insane depicting a wild society party in full bloom, where eternally tipsy socialites are seen sipping champagne through straws from a large bowl and knocking off trays full of glasses just for the hell of it - besides indulging in some very politically incorrect behavior by, among other things, continuously humiliating their uptight and openly contemptuous English butler and dancing around in blackface! The pacing sags here and there but, overall, it's a disarmingly hilarious concoction with a frenzied stream of verbal gags which is often hard to keep up with; in light of all this, the intricate plot with its many red herrings and variety of suspects (including a rather surprising villain) seems of secondary importance.

Whale also cheekily inserts a couple of in-jokes (and at least one overtly gay reference) at the expense of his past horror output by name-dropping the likes of THE BLACK CAT (1934), BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) and DRACULA'S DAUGHTER (1936). Interestingly enough, the film was shot very quickly during a delay in the start of production of Whale's subsequent film, SHOWBOAT (1936) - which had arisen so as to give time to Irene Dunne to finish shooting another major Universal production of the time, MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (1935) - and, in the first place, Universal had only reluctantly greenlighted REMEMBER LAST NIGHT? once Whale had agreed to do DRACULA'S DAUGHTER in return (more on this later)!!

The film is highlighted by a bizarre hypnosis sequence in which Prof. Karl Herman Eckhardt Jones (Gustav von Seyffertitz) attempts to induce the party guests to recall the events of the previous night because they're all too hungover to do it by themselves! The elaborate décor courtesy of top Hollywood set designer Charles D. Hall (including a life-size barge for a bar!) gives the film a visual stylishness strikingly akin to Whale's magnum opus BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

REMEMBER LAST NIGHT boasts a sharp and witty script - co-written by Dan Totheroh of THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER (1941) fame - and a great cast of character actors with the delightful Constance Cummings - real-life wife of Whale's THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932) scriptwriter, Benn W. Levy - Edward Brophy (hilarious as a "reformed" safecracker turned amateur sleuth and busy body) and Arthur Treacher (the befuddled butler, of course) standing out in particular. It's also worth noting that Whale managed here to fill out his cast list with several other vintage horror regulars like the aforementioned Brophy and von Seyffertitz, Robert Armstrong and Rafaela Ottiano, not to mention his own fixture, E. E. Clive! Besides, there's also a priceless uncredited bit from frequent Laurel and Hardy foil, Tiny Sandford as a disgruntled truck driver.

Sadly, this has only been the second (or is that third?) non-horror James Whale film I've watched (although I should be adding two more before long) but it does make you wonder whether the time has come for Universal to honor one of its most eminent past film-makers with a "James Whale Collection" DVD Box Set. All those in favor, raise their hands now!