Wonderful Movie

Just perfect...

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Even though I cannot for the life of me wrap my mind around the concept of a coffee that puts you to sleep Jack Benny's The Horn Blows At Midnight is not as bad as the reputation it has. A reputation by the way that Benny himself gave the film. It was a running gag on his radio and television show that Benny forsook movie making because of the bad reviews the film received.Seeing it today it's not as bad as all that, in fact it has a few funny moments. Benny is a trumpeter in a radio studio orchestra and he falls asleep during the announcer's commercial for Paradise Coffee, the coffee that makes you sleep. In his dream Benny becomes an angel playing trumpet in a heavenly orchestra, larger than anything Leonard Bernstein ever directed. He gets an assignment from one of the bosses Guy Kibbee to blow his heavenly trumpet at midnight to signal the utter destruction of a minor planet the natives call Earth.Needless to say Benny bungles the job and the film is his effort to complete his assignment. Kibbee's not pleased and he sends Alexis Smith down from heaven to babysit Jack. Later on Kibbee himself shows up. There are a couple of fallen angels played by Allyn Joslyn and John Alexander who like the life they've got on earth now. And there's Reginald Gardiner who's a musician and a society burglar with his assistant Dolores Moran who Benny interrupts mid crime and a host of other familiar movie faces which in itself is reason enough to watch The Horn Blows At Midnight.Jack plays some tribute to Harold Lloyd with some stunts at the climax involving some great height. There's a gag involving a human pendulum that was later used with other familiar faces in It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Jack also becomes rocket man at one point, clearly copying Bob Hope being shot out of a cannon in The Road To Zanzibar.Don't believe the hype about The Horn Blows At Midnight, you might actually like it.

This movie is very mediocre. Jack Benny isn't used nearly as well as he could be, and the script is very weak. I can't stand any movie that uses the "it was just a dream" cheat to get the hero out of a difficult situation, and this one does it very poorly. We're told at the beginning of the movie it's a dream, and I quickly lost interest from that point onward.On the other hand, Jack Benny made a 1-hour radio version of this movie for The Ford Theater in 1949. That version isn't great; it's like most comedy from that era that hasn't worn as well as those from earlier or later time periods. However, it has a better script, and it is NOT a dream! More importantly, whoever did the update was able to come up with a pretty good ending for a story that sets up an impossible situation (destroying the world isn't typically considered a good ending in a comedy). The radio version's ending was very timely for 1949, and a little sad listening to it today.If you want to hear it, the radio version is relatively easy to locate on the internet. Just search for "The Horn Blows at Midnight" and "Ford Theater", and you should be able to find multiple sites with the mp3.

That title isn't meant to be a put-down... considering that Carl Stalling of the Termite Terrace cartooning unit at Warner Brothers did some of the music, and the sound effects track used a LOT of stuff from Bugs Bunny cartoons, I think it's a fair question.A FAR better movie than Jack Benny claimed (for years afterward he did jokes about the film, wondering why he didn't get an Oscar), THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT is simply a cartoon for adult audiences, staged with human beings instead of animated drawings. It uses all of the basic tools of a cartoon... an outlandish situation, a suspension of belief in reality, and a total disregard for physics and natural law.A lot of posters here criticize the movie for not being funnier. It IS funny, very much so... but it's a much more laid back and understated humor than we see in today's films. Remember, film audiences in 1945 were not expecting to see something out of PORKIES or ANIMAL HOUSE; their tastes were a lot different than ours. This isn't a comedic style that beats you over the head; it's a platform that lets the considerable comedic talent employed show off it's best schtick... Margaret Dumont playing her trademark Upper Class Lady (as Mme. Traviata, the opera singer) and looking completely ridiculous in that role with her choice of music... Reginald Gardener using his facial expressiveness to indicate extreme pain at the mutilation of his music... Benny doing his stand-up jokes... and Franklin Pangborn, "The Master of the Slow Burn", displaying his best move again and again all thru the movie.There IS over the top craziness here tho, in the final dream sequence where the battle for possession of the trumpet takes place. In good WB cartoon style they saved the insanity for the end of the picture. The cartoon sound effects show up in profusion here, and Stalling's cartoon musical scoring comes to the fore; THE MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE being played in perfect Termite Terrace style to indicate drunkenness gets it's point across perfectly.It's a FAR better movie than Benny ever let on in his radio show patter; he should have been PROUD of it, and I suspect that actually he secretly WAS.

Not really as terrible as my rating might seem to indicate. This movie is mildly amusing, has imaginative set design, and there are some visually stunning shots. I'd give it an average rating of 5 or so, except it loses points for a couple important reasons.First...the stars.This was my introduction to Jack Benny and I was not impressed. I didn't find him funny at all - which could be the script's weakness as well, but Benny's physical presence & personality should've made up for poor writing...and didn't. He is one of the least charming, least attractive "leading men" I've ever seen. I understand he had a very popular radio show... well, maybe film just wasn't his medium.Alexis Smith plays Benny's unlikely love interest, and her character isn't really developed - she might as well be made of cardboard. Guy Kibbee is fun, but woefully underused.Second...the story.The script makes a slight attempt to Say Something Serious about the state of the planet. The angels plan to destroy Earth because... we suck. So we'd better start behaving better! I guess. The message is vague and there's no real follow-through. This sort of storyline - the end of the world due to humanity's failure - feels like it *should* be taken seriously. It doesn't fit in such a fluffy film.I absolutely LOATHE the "it was only a dream" plot device. Especially when it's revealed to be a dream at the beginning of the movie! What the heck is the point of *that*? Knowing from the start that everything you're about to see, isn't really happening, kind of sucks the fun out of it. The story becomes pointless and meaningless. It feels like they just couldn't figure out how to resolve the whole Earth-is-doomed thing. There was no way out of it (unless the writers went with a more serious treatment - maybe a twist on "It's A Wonderful Life", yeah, this time it's up to a human to convince an angel that humanity is worth saving...call it "It's A Wonderful World After All"). Anyway, after Benny wakes up, nothing really changes in his life, and nothing has been learned. Utterly pointless.I can see how people might enjoy "The Horn Blows At Midnight" if they're in the mood for something surreal and silly (although it never hits the heights of truly inspired silliness such as you'll find in a Marx Brothers movie, for instance). So, not as stinky as it's reputed to be, but FAR from the lost comedy classic some would like to believe.