Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

The feeling that comes through most palpably watching Duck Soup in 2024 is the desperation of the vaudeville circuit from whence the Marx Brothers act hailed, the go-for-the-jugular imperative to do something, anything to stay on stage and curry the audience's favor. If the jokes are falling flat, then do a dance. If the dancing won't sustain, then sing a song. If the song is a dud, then do some acrobatics or a magic trick or try another joke. And above all, remember - sing out, Louise! You can see this process in the Vitaphone shorts, early sound films capturing vaudeville greats just as film sound technology was beginning to torpedo vaudeville as a national pastime. Check out the Foy Family in Chips of the Old Block (1928) where in less than eight minutes the famous Seven Foys (down one here although the act had already split up by this point, reuniting only for the film record) sing songs, wear goofy costumes, tell jokes, recite a gruesome fairy tale, perform pratfalls, and hoof it like the rent was due yesterday. And in typical vaudeville fashion, there's no glue holding the activities together; they simply present their trades in an array they hope will tantalize. One brother pretends to choke on his fake teeth and once the other brothers slap it out of him, oh now I guess they're dancing again.

Certainly Duck Soup tells a story to link together the comedic spectacles. But it's the desperate energy of those spectacles that powers the film. The Brothers are constantly mugging, even directly addressing us at times to make sure we're loving it. Everything is a bit even if it may push the narrative forward. Obviously, this is the job of any comedian; witness the relentless quest for laughs in the hilarious new HBO Max series Conan O'Brien Must Go. But it's the buffet-style, take-no-prisoners nature of vaudeville that shines through here. As such, Duck Soup feels strikingly modern today. It's over-amped, nerve-wrecked, anarchic, loud, distracted, violent, all the things classical Hollywood cinema is supposed to lack according to viewers who couldn't stomach the black-and-white cinematography of Netflix's Ripley. 

And perhaps the Brothers were savvy in hitting hard and fast. They were lucky enough to survive as a team (minus Zeppo after Duck Soup) into the 1940s when few vaudeville acts ever made it beyond a Vitaphone short. But their imperative is our blessing. Duck Soup is the Marx brothers' finest film, a noise symphony comprised of untranslatable puns, vicious parodies of patriotic anthems, battle sequences making warmongers look as idiotic and reckless as they are, Harpo dangerous with a huge pair of scissors, and the incomparable mirror scene featuring three Grouchos. All that and it's over in is-that-even-feature-length 68 minutes.

Grade: A

Night of the Comet (Thom Eberhardt, 1984)

The obvious problem with this teens-navigating-the-apocalypse turkey is that Eberhardt didn't have enough script for a 95-minute movie, even though he wrote the thing himself. So when Reggie (Catherine Mary Stewart, Bibi in my beloved The Apple) drives through an empty metropolis after a comet has vaporized most of humanity, we're treated to a painfully slow shot-reverse shot sequence of Reggie looking at deserted buildings - first Reggie, then a deserted building, Reggie, building, Reggie, building, on and on, argh!, until a long shot (and looooong take) catches her driving off into the distance. Instead of conveying crucial narrative information, the sequence says, "whew - that ate up two minutes." The remainder proceeds in this lumpy fashion with a criminally anonymous soundtrack which goes for even more criminally exorbitant sums on Discogs. Mary Waronov and Geoffrey Lewis show up as was de rigueur in the 1980s playing maybe sympathetic, maybe not scientists, I forget which even though I watched this three days ago. Pure video-store fodder, Night of the Comet exists solely for Bad Movie Nights, allowing for plenty of space to talk over it and throw popcorn at the screen.

Grade: D

Raise the Titanic (Jerry Jameson, 1980)

I saw this a month ago and have already forgotten most of it. Helmed by the auteur responsible for Airport '77, the worst of the Airports, it's a drearily competent dinosaur with Jason Robards and Alec Guinness on board to pick up what I hope was a hefty check. The only thing I want to remember is the fact that once the Titanic is raised, the raisers felt it necessary to set up a complete coffee station inside. Check out the background in the pic below.

Grade: C

Late Night with the Devil (Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes, 2023)

SPOILERS

 

I knew exactly how the hotly anticipated Late Night with the Devil would play out - fun windup/compelling concept, muddled ending. Most of the film purports to be a found-footage presentation of the October 31, 1977 episode of Night Owls with Jack Delroy, a late-night talk show in perpetual competition with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. In the hopes of finally gaining a ratings edge over Carson, Delroy (David Dastmalchian, fantastic) dedicates the Halloween episode to the occult by having as guests parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her supposedly demon-possessed patient Lilly D'Abo (Ingrid Torelli). For a good hour, Late Night with the Devil stuns with its deep commitment to the concept complete with a complex backstory and impressive period work. 

As with 99.9% of horror films, though, co-directors and co-screenwriters Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes botch their hard-won conceptual triumph with a sloppy dénouement. Basic narrative filmmaking dictates that the protagonist has a goal which gets thwarted by the antagonist with their antithetical goal. Indeed, the Cairnes make it clear that Delroy will do anything to beat Carson. As a member of The Grove, a shadowy club of elites, Delroy has access to an enormous store of power. At the film's climax, we learn that The Grove is a satanic cabal with the ability to grant Delroy his wish of ratings victory. But in a Bad Twist Ending Theater-worthy ending, unbeknownst to Delroy, the price extracted for such glory is the death of his wife Madeleine Piper (Georgina Haig).  

But while Delroy's motives are perfectly clear, The Grove remains shadowy indeed. Like too many horror villains, we don't know what they want. Who exactly are these people? There's an obvious reference to Bohemian Grove here so why not flesh out the concept a bit with some despots or capitalists with a political or societal axe to grind? Even more confusingly, if Delroy is indeed a Grove member in (one must presume) good standing, then why has the group extracted such a horrible price from him? Did The Grove get what they wanted? Is Delroy's despair and, given the implications of the sirens at the very end of the film, lifetime imprisonment a success? Is The Grove simply there to create evil? And if so, as I ask of so many horror films, how does this feel-bad ending make it any weightier or worthy of extended reflection than a feel-good ending?

Grade: B+