Night Life of the Gods

Thorne Smith wrote some of the funniest and most risqué books of the era which my mother introduced her kids to in the 70's. We watched 'I married a Witch' (which is now available on DVD - although I got my copy in Spain several years ago) and my mum told me that she'd seen Topper, Turnabout and that she'd heard that they had may have made Night Life of the Gods. The book rocks which is why I wanted to see the film.

The DVD of this movie took me two years to find and was so appalling in quality that I couldn't finish it - and I really did try. even in postage stamp format the picture was bad. Alas, 70 years of culture and a really bad print really mucks things up. This movie had the opportunity to be THE screwball comedy of all time, it had great lines,sex and all in a time of innocence, I really wish I could have seen if the movie had lived up to it. I guess if it had it might not be in such a sorry state.........

I read about Night Life of the Gods (1935) in the pages of Michael J Weldon's Psychotronic Video Guide (1996) (my other movie bible). I found the movie on youtube and watched... It's a very amusing fantasy comedy about a scientist named Hunter Hawk (Alan Mowbray) that likes to blow things up in his backyard laboratory in New York City. After a particularly powerful explosion he gets knocked out, comes to, and realizes that he has successfully created a ring that turns flesh into stone and vice-a-versa. He turns several members of his family to stone, meets a pretty female leprechaun (Florine McKinney), and together they go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and bring several statues of gods and goddesses to life. The group then goes out on the town, stops to buy clothes, they get drink, and get chased by police. It's very silly and there is cute innocence about the movie. Also with Peggy Shannon, Richard Carle, Theresa Maxwell Conover, Gilbert Emery, Ray Corrigan, George Hassell, Irene Ware, Geneva Mitchell, and Paul Keys.

Thorne Smith was a writer whose stories reliably made good movies, even after the censors cut some of the juice out of them. I am also an Alan Mowbray fan. Thus, I expected a lot from Night Life of the Gods. The title itself suggested a witty parody

This film did not deliver A large amount of time was devoted to Mowbray using his magic ring to freeze annoying people and bring ancient statues of Greek gods to life. Zip! Zap! Huntz Hall could have done it much better. It takes forever to get to the part where the gods are brought to life. When this finally happens , the Gods turn out to be .morons. There are no comments from them about modern life nor any comparison with lifer on Mt. Olympus. They just act like bewildered children with an immense sense of entitlement. Unfortunately, there is very little humor in their romp through New York City.

Florine McKenny is the romantic interest She hams it up royally. Everyone else also does the same, but it is unusual to see this in the romantic lead. She screws her face into some awfully unattractive expressions which I can't remember ever seeing from a female romantic lead, at least not from one as attractive as she.

Too bad.

Quirky fantasy adapted from a novel by Thorne Smith, who had more successful adaptations in Topper and I Married a Witch. This isn't bad though. The sci-fi and fantasy elements are good. Alan Mowbray and Peggy Shannon are having a lot of fun. There's a little too much whimsy and the ending is a cop-out, but there are lots of funny lines and moments. I wonder how much those statues cost.

Crackpot inventor Alan Mowbray devises a process to turn flesh into marble and marble into flesh. After turning the disapproving portion of his family into statues, he gets plastered -- figuratively -- and meets a leprechaum and his 900-year-old daughter, Florinne McKinney. They sneak into a museum and turn statues of Olympian deities into flesh-and-blood, and then go on a boisterous rampage about town.

It's based on Thorne Smith's comic fantasy. Smith and James Branch Cabell were popular fantasy novelists of the 1920s and 1930s, carrying on the tradition of Offenbach's operettas, in which various deities and other figures form myths carry on in ways that modern people with too much wealth and too little sense do. Lowell Sherman directs a crazy comedy about the subject, but remains too well mannered and rational, insistent on having a traditional plot structure about the movie. Still, it's fun while it last. With Peggy Shannon, Richard Carle, Phillips Smalley, Wesley Barry, William 'Stage, and various other well known players as the gods.