Calling All Doctors

Screened at Cinevent in 2019, Calling All doctors is a crowd-pleasing comedy about a hypochondriac and the precarious situation his condition puts him in. Charley Chase catches something from his sneezing secretary so he goes to his doctor. While standing in the waiting room, a man approaches him and tells him his doctor is busy and that since he is also a doctor and can treat him instead. Truly he is a mental case who believes he is a doctor. He convinces Charley to take him home with him, and makes him go right to bed; then he crawls in with him.

There are lots of laughs to be had from this one, both slapstick and sight gags. Charley has plasters on both his front and back, a barrel of aspirin in his room, and an atomizer that he accidentally fills with red ink. There are also bizarre twin paintings over his and his wife's beds depicting a woman who is overlaid onto a horse.

If you look closely you can tell that Charley's stunt double looked nothing like him.

"Calling All Doctors" is a great example why Charley Chase's shorts with Columbia were enjoyable but clearly not up to the standards of his wonderful films with Hal Roach Studio. It takes a great idea and simply overdoes it. In other words, it's about as subtle as a stripper at a Baptist wedding! It tries way too hard to be wacky and in the process sinks the overall level of the short to that of a Three Stooges' short (also from Columbia, by the way). Subtle it ain't!

When the film begins, you see that Charley is a huge hypochondriac. It's a neat idea but the hypochondria angle is WAY overdone as NO ONE is that much of a worry-wart about illnesses. The point is just driven home way too hard and I found myself disliking this very quickly.

Later, Charley imagines he's so sick that he needs to go to the doctor. However, instead of meeting his usual doctor, he is met by a new guy. However, the new doctor is actually a lunatic who THINKS he's a doctor. Hilarity ensues until his family learns about the mix-up. At this point they decide to try to teach Charley a lesson.

As I first said, the film tries awfully hard. If it had tried to be a bit more subtle and wacky, it would have been more enjoyable and less, at times, stupid--though I did enjoy the very silly sneezing phone gag. And, despite its lack of finesse, it did make me laugh and that's what's important with a comedy.

The second of 2 Chase comedies directed by Charles Lamont, CALLING ALL DOCTORS is not one of the comedian's better COLUMBIA shorts. Charley plays a hypochondriac and germaphobe who's convinced that he is a very sick man. His wife and co-workers, tiring of his antics, dream up a scheme to convince him that he is actually sick!! As the scheme plays out, a wacky sanitarium escapee appears and pretends to be a doctor, confusing both Charley and his conspirators! While amusing in some spots, the comedy comes off as quite predictable. A nice time-waster, but definitely not up to Chase's standards. Lamont would later become the director of Abbott & Costello features.