Night Life Of The Gods

Apollo’s Creed

Night Life Of The Gods 
Directed by Lowell Sherman
USA 1935
DVD Region 0

Warning: Full on spoilers.

“Once upon a time, a famous author named Thorne Smith wrote a book, conceived in a moment of delirium, and written in a cuckoo clock, the first chapters convinced us He was crazy. The ensuing left no doubt that possibly WE were. So we leave you to enjoy this new and completely mad type of whimsical humor on the screen.

Stop rattling cellophane! Take Sonny's shoes off! Park your gum under the seat where it belongs, and let's all go crazy together.”
Foreword from the movie version of Night Life Of The Gods

Just a quick dash of a smidgeon of a short review for what was, up until relatively recently (I believe) thought of as a lost film. That is to say, the movie adaptation of Thorne Smith’s Night Life Of The Gods. Dead at the age of 42, one year before this movie was made, Smith was a famous and much loved contemporary humourist who wrote a number of books and collections which tackled booze, sex and society in a comedic and witty manner. Night Life Of The Gods is certainly one of his best remembered but two of his other novels, Topper and Topper Takes A Trip, are perhaps even more known works, both of which were the basis for the first two of three Topper films in the 1930s and 40s, followed by a popular spin off TV show and, in later decades, various other TV films and shows which were less successful.

Now I said above that this movie version of Night Life Of The Gods was thought to be lost, certainly according to a book I’ve recently been reading which was revised around about ten years ago. Well, it must have turned up somewhere but I am surprised that such a title has not, since its rediscovery, had a proper DVD or Blu Ray restoration since its ‘found’ status. As such, I have been forced to take the ‘underground’ route and have acquired a ‘copy’ from that sometimes great resource for ‘unreleased and consigned to the scrapheap for good’ movies... eBay. 

So here I am and... I can understand in some way why this one has not been polished up for a modern audience. The foreword, which I have duplicated in its entirety at the start of this page, is somewhat off putting but it shows how ‘less than confident’ the producers were about putting this somewhat unusual concoction before the general public in the first place. Yeah, let’s tell them it’s crazy in case they don’t enter into the spirit of the thing, right? Not to mention using the horrible US spelling of the word humour, of course.

Okay, so I’ve no idea if this measures up to the original novel (nope, I haven’t read it but I should probably read this author’s works at some stage, he’s one of my dad’s favourite writers) but the plot is about an inventor called Hunter Hawk, played by Alan Mowbray and his crazy explosions which leave his family, who all live in the same house as him, somewhat nervous... and perhaps hopeful that he might die in one of his own explosions and leave them all his money. 

After he is knocked unconscious in his laboratory, pretty much the rest of the movie takes place in his dream. He invents a machine, which he can wear as a ring, which turns people into stone statues and, I have to say, it’s a power used a lot and looks particularly good when shown on screen... especially for a 1935 movie but, perhaps even for modern times. However, the ring can also bring the stone back to flesh but, more so, it can bring statues to life and so, in the usual drunken adventures which are possibly a signature of a Thorne Smith protagonist, Hawk and his friend bring to life the statues of the Gods, such as Apollo (played here by the great serial and b-movie player Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan, billed under his real name of Raymond Benard), Neptune and Diana... and they all go on drunken revelries around the city, pursued by the police and leaving a trail of chaos behind them. 

Now, it’s not a bad film by any means... one particular moment, where Bacchus (as played here by George Hassell) is getting a massage and then decides to neck down the massage oil as there is no suitable alcohol around, certainly tickled me. But, the film does feel somewhat like it’s in the mode of that special kind of chaotic humour you would find in an early Marx Brothers movie... without having the benefit of Groucho, Harpo, Chico... or even Zeppo... present to give the shenanigans that special ingredient. That being said, bearing in mind audiences were already used to and loving Minie’s boys* by this point in their career, I am somewhat puzzled as to why Universal thought they needed that wordy and somewhat cringeworthy opening foreword to introduce the proceedings.

I mean, it’s not terrible but, it’s not terribly good either. The saving grace is, perhaps, that everyone seems really invested in their role and Alan Mowbray certainly seems to be taking things very seriously indeed. And at the start, Hawk seems downright sinister but it’s tempered by Mowbray’s performance once the wine induced hijinks are underway, for sure. 

And there I am with a longer review than I’d expected to be able to write and nothing much more to say about this one other than... while the costumes and scantily clad nature of them seem more appropriate to the pre-code days of Hollywood, which ended only the year before, the modesty of all the actors and actresses here is kept firmly intact. 

Would I recommend Night Life Of The Gods, in terms of the movie version. Well it’s certainly not for everybody but I think such a film, which is somewhat different from most of the other stuff being pumped out by the major studios at the time, certainly deserves a modern audience. I don’t think it will necessarily win any big fans but it’s certainly something which I feel should be seen by people, nevertheless. So, yeah, I would kind of recommend it to various shades of cinephile, actually.

*The Marx Brothers