Lightning Strikes Twice

This is a fast-moving farce, the type of thing that Leon Errol would be doing at RKO a few years later. Ben Lyon and Skeets Gallagher, drunk after a stag party, cause a slight accident with Pert Kelton and hubby Walter Catlett. The latter pair wind up disguising themselves as Lyon's fiancé and her father. Laura Hope "Aunt Pittypat" Crews is Lyon's loony aunt who finds the bogus pair charming. All the while John Davidson is sneaking around as a supposed murderer. Great comedy cast topped off in the third act by the entrance of Fred Kelsey as the detective. Thelma Todd is lovely (of course) as Lyon's real fiancé and her role is limited in that respect. Skeets steals the show and, for once, Chick Chandler's excessive mugging is charming and whimsical. All in all, lots of smiles for this fluffy RKO quickie.

In a stormy night, a couple of cops fall into the sewer drains after getting shot at and they struggle to find their way out. They are reported killed and their bodies taken. Steve Brewster and his lawyer friend Wally Richards wake up from a night drinking to find two con artists, Fay and Gus, worming their way into Steve's house. Worst of all, Steve's girlfriend and her Navy Captain father are coming. It gets even worst when shots are fired. Wally thinks that someone got killed with Steve's gun and everything seems to go missing. Steve's aunt mistakes Fay for Judy.

It is a convoluted movie. It is all very chaotic. I have trouble keeping track of all of it. It starts funny enough. The screwball works sometimes. I'm mostly taken with Pert Kelton. First I would reconsider the Keystone Cops opening scene. There really should only be those two cops and there should be no shots. The annoying reporter would make up the story whole cloth. Once the movie gets to the house, they may need fewer characters. It is too complicated. Sometimes chaos is meant to be funny. This one loses the thread and eventually the comedy.

What do you get with a cast that includes Thelma Todd, Pert Kelton, Chick Chandler, Walter Catlett, Jonathan Hale and Fred Kelsey as a dumb cop? Well, if it's it's this film, a not particularly funny "comedy" that makes Skeets Gallegher look like a decent dramatic actor. It's a thorough-going waste of everyone's time. Including lead Ben Lyon's, but particularly mine.

I wasn't super-motivated to write a review on this one, but after coming here and seeing the ridiculous negativity, I decided to voice my dissent.

Plot In a Nutshell: A man and his pal try to rid themselves of two scammers while dealing with a ditzy housemaid, a nosy aunt, bumbling cops, a dogged reporter and a crazed butler, and at the same, trying to create a semblance of normalcy for when his fiancée and her father arrive. Good luck!

That sounds screwball, doesn't it? And it sure delivers on that score. One reviewer wrote that the film was confusing. I wasn't confused in the least. I found it very easy to follow. Someone else wrote that it doesn't make sense. It made sense to me. The only part one might argue is why the butler stuck around. But it was established at the end that the butler was clearly unbalanced, so you can't really apply logic to his decisions, can you?

I only watched this film because I recently read a book about the mysterious circumstances of Thelma Todd's premature death in the 1930s. So I try to check out any of her films I come across. And this turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It's barely over an hour, so it doesn't wear out its welcome. The two male leads have an engaging chemistry that makes their friendship believable. The plot, although clearly a bit silly, is also clearly meant to be that way. And there were several scenes that made me laugh so hard I had to rewind and watch them again!

All in all, I enjoyed this film thoroughly and did not at all find it a waste of my time.

8/10. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: Yes, absolutely.

It was a dark and stormy night, and a policeman was shot outside 721 Palm Drive. Or was he? In "Lightning Strikes Twice" mistaken identity is carried to the nth degree, with Pert Kelton and Walter Catlett as a vaudeville act dropped into a society house where ditzy Aunt Jane's (Laura Jane Crews) young nephew, Steve, (Ben Lyon) is preparing to introduce her to his fiancée (Thelma Todd) and her starchy Navy captain father (Jonathan Hale). Wally Richards ("Skeets" Gallagher) is Steve's sidekick, single of course, who tries to keep all the balls in the air as confusion reigns and the butler (John Davidson), who thinks he did it but didn't, hides in closets and looks a lot like Cesare, the somnabulist in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" minus the eye shadow.

Hardly an undiscovered gem, "Lightning Strkes Twice" has its moments, particularly Pert Kelton's fan dance, though the running gags fall flat after the fourth or fifth time. In contrast, Thelma Todd is saddled with a serious role in the middle of the farce, and that's a pity. She does fine, but it's a waste of her talents as a comic actress. Overall, though, at 63 minutes, you could do much worse.

Not available to stream or as an official DVD, TCM screens it from time to time, most recently during a day devoted to Pert Kelton.