Niagara Falls

Sweethearts Sam (Slim Summerville) and Emmy (Zasu Pitts) have waited twenty years to get married but are finally on their way to a Niagara Falls hotel. Nearly there, they encounter a young couple having car trouble at the side of the road. Sam and Emmy assume the couple are newlyweds like themselves; in fact, Margy (Marjorie Woodworth) and Tom (Tom Brown) are anything but—they're strangers having trouble with two separate cars, and Margy is helping herself to Tom's tools while he fiddles under his own hood. There lies the setup: and the rest of the film consists of Sam attempting to "reconcile" Tom and Margy; Emmy waiting for Sam to pay attention to her back in the bridal suite; and Margy and Tom trading insults, attempting to escape Sam's watchful eye, and eventually….Well, I don't want to spoil it for you.

This is a very silly film, which is completely okay because it makes absolutely no pretensions to being anything else.

The two young leads are attractive and pleasant—nothing exceptional, but they're interesting enough to root for. We don't get enough of Zasu Pitts—though she does have a good scene cuddling with a man's jacket, pretending it's Sam.

Summerville as Sam is persistently and vigorously goofy, to the point where he really looks natural enough climbing along a window ledge in his pajamas carrying a large revolver. The scene where he re-enters from the window ledge into a strange couple's room and hides in their bed is hilarious—what makes it funniest is that he plays it exactly as if this ridiculous situation is perfectly normal.

This 43-minute "streamliner" has to be just about what Hal Roach had in mind when he started producing these quickies.

First I want to start by saying that Niagara Falls is lovely even in black and white. Zasu Pitts and Slim Somerville play anxious newlyweds Sam and Emmy Sawyer...a farmer and a farmer's daughter who have wanted to marry for twenty years and finally did it. They arrive at the beautiful Niagara Falls misunderstanding a bickering young couple for newlyweds like themselves, Sam gives them their honeymoon suite thinking it will help solve their problems. Not only are the two not married but they don't get along, which they found out on the road where they met over a flat tire.

"Get away from me you wolf! You picked the wrong little red riding hood."

"Why I wouldn't pick you up if I was starving and you were a ham sandwich!"

He is a young bachelor enjoying being young and playing the field..."he who loves and leaves learns to love another day"...and she wants to get married young and have "oodles and oodles of children" with no divorce.

Misunderstandings abound as everyone thinks the young bickering couple is married...Sam goes so far as to lock them in the honeymoon suite together thinking this will help them work out their differences.

This was so great! Good comedy and an underlining love story. It's a short...and I just wanted more!

Slow moving Slim Summerville and fidgety and flibberty gibbet Zasu Pitts did a series of B film comedies for Hal Roach. This is the first of them I've seen. I'm betting some of the others are better for both these performers.

I doubt anyone got near Niagara Falls for shooting, it just looked like a lot of background shots used.

Slim and Zasu are looking to recapture some of their youth in that most romantic of places Niagara Falls. Along the way they meet a young couple who've been thrown together by chance, Tom Brown and Marjorie Woodworth. Slim and Zasu get the idea these two are prospective bride and groom. Take it from there in this comedy of errors.

I have to say that Summerville was the most insistent of busybodies. Today no one would care if Woodworth and Brown were getting married or just shacking up. But it was a different age and that's what dates this film so.

What you normally see from Pitts and Summerville you get in Niagara Falls. For fans of the leads.

I was very surprised when I read a few of the reviews for this film, as apparently some time after NIAGARA FALLS was made, someone stupidly combined this film with MISS POLLY. While both are short Hal Roach films and star many of the same actors, combining them is like combining PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE with STAR WARS! Sure, they're both sci-fi films, but other than that there is a huge gap in quality of the two pictures. Bluntly put, NIAGARA FALLS is a cute comedy whereas MISS POLLY is a pile of crap--merging them together must have resulted in a very confusing film indeed! I saw NIAGARA FALLS on Turner Classic Movies and it was shown in its original form--thank goodness. Now I am sure that many will think my score of 9 is way out of line, but I am NOT comparing this film to every other movie--just other short films (such as Roach's "Streamliners") and B-movies. I've actually seen quite a few of these post-Laurel and Hardy films by Roach Studios and this is bar far the funniest and best made of the bunch (and they do vary wildly in quality).

What makes this film so good is the quality of the writing. While MISS POLLY totally missed the mark, here with NIAGARA FALLS everything fell perfectly into place. One way I know it was such a good film is that my teenage daughter who is NOT a lover of old films like me still loved the film. Another way I know how good it was is that we both laughed repeatedly at the film. Sure, sometimes the humor wasn't 100% sophisticated, but it was funny--very, very funny. I particularly loved how outlandish the film became--such as the scenes with the gun and the very end of the film.

As far as the acting goes, it was fine but I don't know why Slim and Zasu got secondary billing--they (particularly Slim Summerville) were great. Zasu was not annoying (something she frequently was in other films) and Slim was like a walking cartoon character.

So if you'd like a good laugh and don't mind that the film is occasionally very silly, watch this movie.

I have been watching lot of 30s and 40s classics. I came across this and this was so much fun. If you are ok with appreciating the values more than 8 decades ago, I think this is so much fun as a screwball comedy of errors.

This was a laugh riot from start to finish. All the characters- the young "couple", the old couple and the hotel manager were all very funny.

Too many people are bothered that this doesn't seem to be shot in Niagara Falls. I don't know if people were expecting this as a romantic movie based in the Niagara Falls. This is just a sweet and funny comedy. Best 40 minutes of my time spent.