The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)

Lack of good storyline.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

A surreal comedy from Warner Bros., apparently made while studio heads were on vacation. How else do we explain such inspired lunacies as a hotel elevator to heaven, angels with periodic bouts of delirium tremens (likely what the writers were suffering), or a giant coffee service hanging from the side of a skyscraper! Somehow this exotica got from storyboard to screen without the usual deadening hand of studio convention. It's pretty funny too, although the big screen is not the best venue for Jack Benny, whose personal brand of humor shows best on radio or tv. Still, the laughs are there among the general weirdness, and anyone who turns down the sound of the final scene should experience a nightmare of urban existence as frightening as any from vintage film noir, with Benny literally drowning in a sea of caffeine. This is also a chance for men to scope out that heavenly body known as Alexis Smith. Her statuesque bearing was probably a little too stiff for major stardom, but no one ever looked better in a toga or the high fashions of the day. All in all, this inventive little comedy was far ahead of its time, and despite Benny's running radio gag, possesses all the underpinnings of a minor cult classic.

Comedian Jack Benny spent the second half of his long career poking fun at this film, disparaging it at every opportunity and mocking his performance in it. For the longest time I believed this was just a joke and that the film wasn't nearly as bad as Jack made it out to be. Oh boy, was I wrong. THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT is possibly the most ill-advised project Benny ever signed up for, and I say that as a die-hard Benny fan and proud owner of every episode of his radio show.He plays Athaneal, third trumpet player in a radio orchestra, who falls asleep during a broadcast and dreams that he's an angel sent to Earth to blow the last trumpet, signaling the end of the world, at exactly midnight. But a couple of fallen angels, who'd previously failed to do the job, are determined to stop him. Confusion ensues as the inept Athaneal attempts to complete his mission, oblivious to the deceitful wiles of his opponents. Given the premise, the fine supporting cast (Reginald Gardner, Franklin Pangborn, Alexis Smith, Margaret Dumont,Guy Kibbee, Mike Mazurki) and veteran director Raoul Walsh at the helm, this should have been a surefire hit. So why does the entire project fall flat on its face? There's several reasons. The script is terrible,the supporting cast is wasted and the comedy is lame in the extreme. Neither of the credited screenplay writers demonstrate the slightest talent for writing comedy above a fifth grade level, and it's directed with a complete absence of style. An overwhelming sense of desperation pervades every scene involving bits of business that might very - very - loosely be termed comedy, and the story's climax is so crudely constructed as to be downright embarrassing. On their own these failings cripple the film, but what really sabotages any chance of success for THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT is the casting or - more accurately - the miscasting of Jack Benny. By 1945 Benny's character was firmly established in the American psyche thanks to his long running and immensely popular radio show. As far as the public was concerned Benny was vain, penny pinching, petty, frequently exasperated and eternally 39 years old. He was a consummate comedian who didn't tell jokes but allowed himself more often than not to be the butt of jokes set up by the talented cast of characters he surrounded himself with on his weekly show. He could get a bigger laugh out of his patented pause than any punchline, and he was - despite his many apparent character flaws - universally loved by radio audiences.THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT takes advantage of exactly none of these traits, choosing instead to have Benny play a thinly sketched character who looks like Jack Benny but doesn't resemble him at all. There's nothing in the part of Athaneal that contemporary audiences could identify with, and nothing in this new Benny character that's funny enough to elicit a laugh either. Why have him be a trumpeter when he was universally known as a (very bad) violin player is a mystery. The sum total of these misjudgments is a film that's a major disappointment.I'm not surprised that Benny mocked it for the rest of his days. What else could he do? He had to have recognised it was an incredible career misstep and one which he was lucky to recover from because he didn't depend on films to sustain his popularity. Had his radio show writers been similarly dumb enough to tamper with a winning formula we probably wouldn't remember him today as one of the greats of American comedy.Check out more of my reviews at http://thefilmivejustseen.blogspot.com/

I saw this one New Year's night on TV when I was about eleven. The second time I saw it was last night when it was on cable. It was true to my memory. Jack Benny WAS stuck in a giant coffee cup and it WAS an extremely funny movie. The coffee cup gag is one of the most surreal things I've ever seen in a movie from Hollywood's golden age. Imagine a Tex Avery cartoon done in live action and you'll get an idea of the visual. Jack Benny really does look as if he's being filmed in a mechanized coffee cup/coffee pot/coffee spoon structure. It's incredible. Harold Lloyd would have been hard-pressed to match this scene. This scene itself makes this movie well worth watching. The mood of the movie is happy and bouncy as only movies made between 1945 and 1949 are. There must have been some optimism informing Hollywood's imagination as the Second World War wound down. Movies between then and the beginning of the Korean War practically burst with a sense of victory. THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT works as a testimony to a time when America felt itself riding on top of the world. There are other sight gags taking advantage of vertiginous views. People dangle from the ledge of buildings throughout. This is directed by the man who directed HIGH SIERRA, THE ROARING TWENTIES and a few other classics. The dialogue is very much like radio comedy. Jack Benny was, of course, a radio comic. The scene in the diner would have played quite well, if not even a bit better, on radio. I find it significant that a few years after this movie came out, Benny performed in a radio version of it. Others have commented on the fact that he turned this movie's relative box-office failure into a running joke which lasted the rest of his career. Benny's shtick demanded that he exaggerate negative qualities: He deliberately played violin off-key to highlight his radio persona's vanity; He pretended to feud with Fred Allen, when in reality there was no hostility between them. Both comedians boosted their ratings with their supposed feud. He was only playing his part by making people think THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT was the cinematic equivalent of his violin-playing. Not only was it up to Hollywood's standard comedic levels of that time, it surpassed them. Perhaps my familiarity with old-time radio makes me more partial to this movie than the average viewer. I am surprised, nevertheless, that many people find THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT a little pointless. The visuals are amazing, the dialogue is snappy and the music is great. You'll hear a tune which sounds a bit like the Looney Tunes theme. There's a reason for this. Carl Stalling was one of the people who worked on the music, and he worked on many Warner Brothers cartoons. If you like comedy you'll enjoy this movie.

I love this movie (as well as all Jack Benny movies, few as they are). It's tight, taught, fast-paced (in fact, it becomes quite hilariously frantic in the end). The gimmicks of fantasy are quite innovative and the storyline is consistent beginning to end (with never a dull moment). The performances are delicious from a cast one cannot equal in today's (almost exclusively SNL) paucity of Lovable character actors (Rob Schneider excluded).Wish it were on DVD, AND colorized (which apparently is something not worth doing any longer, now that "the anti-colorization Nazis" seem to have won): It not that they don't wish to see it colorized (which I can respect), but that they do not wish ME to see it colorized--which is incomprehensibly selfish of them!