The Nitwits

Nitwits, The (1935)

*** (out of 4)

Wheeler and Woolsey comedy has the boys playing cigar salesmen who get caught up in a murder mystery surrounding a killer known as "The Black Widow". This is a pretty good little gem that manages to be quite hilarious but it also has a good mystery surrounding it. There's also no doubt that this film influenced Abbott and Costello's Who Done It? not to mention there are other gags here later used by Abbott and Costello. The film has non-stop gags including a hilarious sequence that involves a chase towards the end of the film. Just about every type of gag gets thrown out there and the majority of them stick. There's also a very funny scene where Woolsey scares the future dead victim by singing a song about a black widow. Betty Grable play's Wheeler's girlfriend and the prime murder suspect and she's very good in her bit role. Black actor Willie Best has some of the funniest scenes, although most of them come in the form of racial jokes.