"Remember Last Night?" was billed as a sophisticated melodrama with laughs and boasted of four murders and an attempted suicide as a group of hard drinking socialites, after a wild night spent in an alcoholic haze find themselves involved in murder. It was lovely to see Constance Cummings really let her hair down as a wacky champagne drinking society girl and Robert Young, as always was at his dependable best, but to compare them to Nick and Nora Charles is laughable. The film had not much charm and while I am not familiar with James Whale's background, he seemed to be taking a satirical look at the idle rich but his direction really floundered. The only actors who seemed believable in their roles were Sally Eilers and Robert Armstrong as a sister and brother who had fought hard to shake off their shanty town background. And of course Arthur Treacher as the acidic tongued butler, whose tones dripped with sarcasm. Nick and Nora could fit in anywhere - from Park Avenue to Skid Row, Tony and Carlotta (Young and Cummings) seem caught in a time warp from the Roaring Twenties. I can't imagine this movie being at all popular with the average audience from the mid thirties for which the depression was still very real. Had James Whale lost touch with the movie going public??
Tony and Carlotta wake up with a massive hangover to find their host dead. No one can really remember their movements and unfortunately things look bad for Tony - he was seen wandering around during the night with a knife and the chauffeur finds a blood stained rag in Tony's Bugatti. But everyone has a motive - the victim, Vic Huling (George Meeker), hadn't been particularly kind to his wife (Eilers) and their driver, Flannagan, (Armstrong) was getting pretty fed up about it. Vic had also been heavying Billy Arliss (as played by Monroe Owsley, he was just a hyped up bundle of nerves) for money he thought Billy owed him.
Edward Arnold makes an appearance playing Edward Arnold, I mean police chief Danny Harrison but he could have been playing a racketeer for all the light and shade he gave the role. With him is Ed Brophy as surprise, surprise, a bumbling side kick. Tony enlists the aid of an eminent hypnotist (Gustav Von Seyffertitz) who is bought in to hypnotise each guest. "One of them was faking" he proclaims and is just about to announce the murderer when he is killed. Anyone familiar with programmers from the mid thirties will have no trouble picking the guilty party!!
The liquor flows freely, surprisingly in a mid 1930s production - even at the end when Arnold chastizes them for drinking, stating "This is how this mess started in the first place", - the last shot of them is grabbing a bottle with the promise of "one last time". Constance Cummings was so much better in the 1940 "Busman's Holiday" with Robert Montgomery as Lord Peter Wimsey. Although she only appeared for less than a minute as Batiste's (Jack La Rue) not quite blind mother she made her part memorable.
Tony and Carlotta wake up with a massive hangover to find their host dead. No one can really remember their movements and unfortunately things look bad for Tony - he was seen wandering around during the night with a knife and the chauffeur finds a blood stained rag in Tony's Bugatti. But everyone has a motive - the victim, Vic Huling (George Meeker), hadn't been particularly kind to his wife (Eilers) and their driver, Flannagan, (Armstrong) was getting pretty fed up about it. Vic had also been heavying Billy Arliss (as played by Monroe Owsley, he was just a hyped up bundle of nerves) for money he thought Billy owed him.
Edward Arnold makes an appearance playing Edward Arnold, I mean police chief Danny Harrison but he could have been playing a racketeer for all the light and shade he gave the role. With him is Ed Brophy as surprise, surprise, a bumbling side kick. Tony enlists the aid of an eminent hypnotist (Gustav Von Seyffertitz) who is bought in to hypnotise each guest. "One of them was faking" he proclaims and is just about to announce the murderer when he is killed. Anyone familiar with programmers from the mid thirties will have no trouble picking the guilty party!!
The liquor flows freely, surprisingly in a mid 1930s production - even at the end when Arnold chastizes them for drinking, stating "This is how this mess started in the first place", - the last shot of them is grabbing a bottle with the promise of "one last time". Constance Cummings was so much better in the 1940 "Busman's Holiday" with Robert Montgomery as Lord Peter Wimsey. Although she only appeared for less than a minute as Batiste's (Jack La Rue) not quite blind mother she made her part memorable.