Plumes de cheval

Plot (or should I say plan of attack)— Entering a college campus, the gang gets to deconstruct the whole idea of higher education.

The gags fly faster than speeding bullets. There's no real let-up, not even for hasty romantic interludes with Zeppo and Todd. It's like the boys have a hundred pages of material to squeeze into 70-minutes. Harpo's got more to do than usual, even a harp solo, while Groucho is at his caustic best with a zillion one-liners. I did miss his usual foil, Margaret Dumont, who should have been lurking somewhere in the faculty lounge. Instead, as a college president, he gets to insult anything collegiate, including America's unofficial national religion-- football. And check out that big game that looks more like Ben Hur than a sports contest. But what I really liked was Thelma Todd in the slinkiest gowns this side of Jean Harlow. And what a fine comedienne she was; too bad her life ended as several probing pages in Hollywood Babylon. All in all, this is the chaos brothers at their liveliest, and may cause highschoolers to rethink the whole idea of higher education.

To anyone who has never seen a Marx Brothers film, it's hard to describe. "Horse Feathers" just may be the wackiest, corniest, dumbest, funniest and just plain craziest movie you've ever seen. It could be any one of those adjectives. In my opinion, it's all of them. It's my favorite film of these guys.

Perhaps no film has so many of the above-listed descriptions, in spades, as this one does. It just leaves you shaking your head. Some of the lines in here are some of the best I've ever heard and some of the scenes and jokes are the dumbest I've ever seen. One thing for sure: they come at you at a machine-gun pace. You barely have time to digest what you just saw and heard and there's another joke coming at you. You can barely keep up with it all. The football scenes at the end of the film are the most outrageous I have ever seen. They, like much of the movie, have to be seen to be believed. Yes, the latter is a little too ridiculous but, hey, that''s the Marx Brothers.

The only breaks from the non-stop jokes comes when one of the brothers decides to sing a song or play the piano or harp. Those tunes are so-so. The long harp solo by Harpo is too long. I read once where the brothers were opposed to having that in this movie...and they were proved right; it didn't fit. Other than that, this is 67 minutes of pure insanity.

There's a lot of good material in this Marx Brothers feature, with just enough plot to hold it together and to set up a very entertaining final sequence. As usual, there are a number of memorable scenes to choose from when picking your favorite parts of the movie.

This time the brothers are let loose on a college campus that is getting ready for a big football game. Groucho and Zeppo are the new college president and his son, while Harpo and Chico arrive from a nearby neighborhood in time to add their own kind of confusion. The campus setting allows them to satirize many aspects of college life, and there are some good off-campus scenes as well, most memorably the 'swordfish' scene in the speakeasy. It's capped off with a hilarious football game that is one of their best sequences.

This ranks highly on almost anyone's list of favorite Marx Brothers features - if you're a fan, make sure to see it.

HORSE FEATHERS, the fourth of the five Paramount Marx Brother Movies, is one of their best - tackling the world of higher education in America. Groucho is the latest of the Presidents of Huxley College, which is doing very badly (apparently) not because of poor scholastic standards but due to not having a successful football team. His son (Zeppo!) steers him toward solving this issue, but with typical Groucho ineptness he thinks the two semi-professional football players he is looking for are Harpo and Chico. He proceeds to regret his own mistake, until the climactic football game.

The music numbers of this film are well remembered, particularly Groucho's introduction ("I'M AGAINST IT!") and "Everyone Says I love you". The latter was sung to the anti-heroine of the story, Thelma Todd in her second and last film with the brothers. Thelma plays the "college widow", a popular fictional figure in early 20th Century American humor - a euphemism for an ever-ready widow of a college professor who was there to have sex with students or the staff. George Ade, the humorist who wrote FABLES IN SLANG, wrote a play called "THE COLLEGE WIDOW" in the teens of the 20th Century. Thelma is certainly effective as the vamp trying to help David Landau (President of Darwin College) get the football signals of Huxley College. Her scenes with Groucho and Chico are quite funny. Chico is playing the piano and she sings. She says she has a falsetto voice. Chico says that's all right, his aunt has a false set of teeth. And Groucho, when taking Thelma for a boat trip throws her a lifesaver (literally), while returning with a duck who interrupted his singing.

The final football game is the second best spoof of college football on film (the one in Harold Lloyd's THE FRESHMAN is a better one). In the end we see the boys demolish football huddles, football signals, even hot dogs (poor Nat Pendleton).

A delightful antique, it is well worth watching. This is one film I'm not against.

Hilarious Marx Bros. film with Groucho as the new president of Huxley College and Zeppo as his son, who convinces his dad to recruit professional football players to help the college's losing team. Groucho sets out to do just that but instead of getting two pros, he recruits speakeasy 'icemen' Chico and Harpo. Chaos naturally ensues at the college leading up to the big football game, which has to be seen to be believed.

All of the brothers are in top form here, with the main three getting lots of funny bits and Zeppo getting possibly his best role from any of their films. Thelma Todd appears in her second Marx Bros. movie, playing the girlfriend of villain David Landau who sets out to seduce Zeppo and winds up seducing the rest of the brothers, too. Sadly there's no Margaret Dumont this time. This is probably the best Marx movie that didn't feature Dumont. Nat Pendleton plays one of the football players on the opposing team. Look out for Walter Brennan as a commentator on the big game. Some funny tunes and several great gags, including "The password is swordfish," the crazy football game, Groucho teaching a class, and all those funny things Harpo pulls out of that coat of his. It's one of the Marx Brothers' best. Definitely recommended.