The Horn Blows at Midnight

Even though I cannot for the life of me wrap my mind around the concept of a coffee that puts you to sleep Jack Benny's The Horn Blows At Midnight is not as bad as the reputation it has. A reputation by the way that Benny himself gave the film. It was a running gag on his radio and television show that Benny forsook movie making because of the bad reviews the film received.

Seeing it today it's not as bad as all that, in fact it has a few funny moments. Benny is a trumpeter in a radio studio orchestra and he falls asleep during the announcer's commercial for Paradise Coffee, the coffee that makes you sleep. In his dream Benny becomes an angel playing trumpet in a heavenly orchestra, larger than anything Leonard Bernstein ever directed. He gets an assignment from one of the bosses Guy Kibbee to blow his heavenly trumpet at midnight to signal the utter destruction of a minor planet the natives call Earth.

Needless to say Benny bungles the job and the film is his effort to complete his assignment. Kibbee's not pleased and he sends Alexis Smith down from heaven to babysit Jack. Later on Kibbee himself shows up. There are a couple of fallen angels played by Allyn Joslyn and John Alexander who like the life they've got on earth now. And there's Reginald Gardiner who's a musician and a society burglar with his assistant Dolores Moran who Benny interrupts mid crime and a host of other familiar movie faces which in itself is reason enough to watch The Horn Blows At Midnight.

Jack plays some tribute to Harold Lloyd with some stunts at the climax involving some great height. There's a gag involving a human pendulum that was later used with other familiar faces in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Jack also becomes rocket man at one point, clearly copying Bob Hope being shot out of a cannon in The Road To Zanzibar.

Don't believe the hype about The Horn Blows At Midnight, you might actually like it.

A surreal comedy from Warner Bros., apparently made while studio heads were on vacation. How else do we explain such inspired lunacies as a hotel elevator to heaven, angels with periodic bouts of delirium tremens (likely what the writers were suffering), or a giant coffee service hanging from the side of a skyscraper! Somehow this exotica got from storyboard to screen without the usual deadening hand of studio convention. It's pretty funny too, although the big screen is not the best venue for Jack Benny, whose personal brand of humor shows best on radio or tv. Still, the laughs are there among the general weirdness, and anyone who turns down the sound of the final scene should experience a nightmare of urban existence as frightening as any from vintage film noir, with Benny literally drowning in a sea of caffeine. This is also a chance for men to scope out that heavenly body known as Alexis Smith. Her statuesque bearing was probably a little too stiff for major stardom, but no one ever looked better in a toga or the high fashions of the day. All in all, this inventive little comedy was far ahead of its time, and despite Benny's running radio gag, possesses all the underpinnings of a minor cult classic.

How can any comedy with Jack Benny and a supporting cast that includes Margaret Dumont, Reginald Gardiner, John Alexander, Allyn Joslyn, Ethel Griffies, Mike Mazurki, Franklin Pangborn and Guy Kibbe be that bad???

Well, it's easy to see why this one just fell short of the mark. The script is a hodgepodge about a trumpeter who must redeem himself by returning to earth on a special mission. His girlfriend is played by the lovely Alexis Smith who shows a flair for light comedy in this caper.

Relying on a succession of sight gags to keep things moving, it's all done in brisk screwball/fantasy style under Raoul Walsh's direction. You can spot the youthful Bobby Blake in the park sequence as the boy who won't give up Benny's trumpet.

The heavenly sequences are done with a certain style that is missing in the earthbound adventures--but the uneven film is not nearly as bad as Benny claimed it to be.

A funny and friendly fantasy from the forties; it shows Jack Benny at his comedic best. The writing is witty and the supporting cast is wonderful. The scene which shows the cast dangling precariously, and hilariously, above Times Square is worth the price of a ticket.

I saw this one New Year's night on TV when I was about eleven. The second time I saw it was last night when it was on cable. It was true to my memory. Jack Benny WAS stuck in a giant coffee cup and it WAS an extremely funny movie. The coffee cup gag is one of the most surreal things I've ever seen in a movie from Hollywood's golden age. Imagine a Tex Avery cartoon done in live action and you'll get an idea of the visual. Jack Benny really does look as if he's being filmed in a mechanized coffee cup/coffee pot/coffee spoon structure. It's incredible. Harold Lloyd would have been hard-pressed to match this scene. This scene itself makes this movie well worth watching. The mood of the movie is happy and bouncy as only movies made between 1945 and 1949 are. There must have been some optimism informing Hollywood's imagination as the Second World War wound down. Movies between then and the beginning of the Korean War practically burst with a sense of victory. THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT works as a testimony to a time when America felt itself riding on top of the world. There are other sight gags taking advantage of vertiginous views. People dangle from the ledge of buildings throughout. This is directed by the man who directed HIGH SIERRA, THE ROARING TWENTIES and a few other classics. The dialogue is very much like radio comedy. Jack Benny was, of course, a radio comic. The scene in the diner would have played quite well, if not even a bit better, on radio. I find it significant that a few years after this movie came out, Benny performed in a radio version of it. Others have commented on the fact that he turned this movie's relative box-office failure into a running joke which lasted the rest of his career. Benny's shtick demanded that he exaggerate negative qualities: He deliberately played violin off-key to highlight his radio persona's vanity; He pretended to feud with Fred Allen, when in reality there was no hostility between them. Both comedians boosted their ratings with their supposed feud. He was only playing his part by making people think THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT was the cinematic equivalent of his violin-playing. Not only was it up to Hollywood's standard comedic levels of that time, it surpassed them. Perhaps my familiarity with old-time radio makes me more partial to this movie than the average viewer. I am surprised, nevertheless, that many people find THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT a little pointless. The visuals are amazing, the dialogue is snappy and the music is great. You'll hear a tune which sounds a bit like the Looney Tunes theme. There's a reason for this. Carl Stalling was one of the people who worked on the music, and he worked on many Warner Brothers cartoons. If you like comedy you'll enjoy this movie.