lshelhamer Produced at a time when America was having second thoughts about the 18th Amednment, this is an interesting period piece that shows the effects of alcohol on two families as well as the unintended consequences of Prohibition. Unfortunately, the movie runs too long as the plot tries to develop the eventual interconnection of the two families. However, it does treat the effects of Prohibition in an evenhanded manner. Neil Hamilton has the best roll as the upright son of the Southern family who descends into alcoholism, despite having seen the effects of booze on his father. Robert Young, who has the corresponding position in the city family, remains "dry", but comes across as somewhat of a prude. Jimmy Durante is totally miscast as a Treasury Agent.

utgard14 If I had one piece of advice for people wanting to try out films of the 1930s, it would be to check out any movie with Walter Huston in it. From Gabriel Over the White House to Kongo to The Beast of the City and more, the man was in some of the weirdest and most interesting films of the period. Here we have a film about the dangers of alcohol, made a year before prohibition ended. The film seems to be both anti-alcohol and anti-prohibition, which makes for some fascinating think-work about what the movie is really trying to advocate.The film starts with Lewis Stone's Colonel Sanders-looking Southern patriarch, whose daughter (Dorothy Jordan) is trying to get him to quit drinking. After a short while we move North to a fresh-faced Robert Young and his lush of a father Walter Huston. The two stories eventually intersect as Young falls in love with the daughter. Prohibition passes which leads to a tragedy for Young, who decides to become a treasury agent and is partnered with Jimmy Durante (!). From here the movie hits a bit of a lull as we get a fairly typical T-man story until the final minutes, which are exciting.The film offers some great moments such as the haunting image of Lewis Stone's final fate or the powerful scene where Walter Huston's wife confronts him about his bootleg liquor. The cast is excellent. The performances are melodramatic but in the best way. In addition to the stars already mentioned, we also have Neil Hamilton, Myrna Loy, and Wallace Ford. Not a bad lineup.As an entertainment piece, I think it's solid. But it has added value as a historical curio, allowing modern audiences to get perspective on the thoughts and feelings at the time regarding an important period in our history.

aimless-46 Victor Fleming's "The Wet Parade" (1932) would be an appropriate double feature companion to "Reefer Madness". But while it shares that film's exaggerated (insert hysteria here) style, it is a much higher budget production and ultimately delivers a balanced and well- reasoned message.It also has an all-star cast, although many of them are very early in their careers. The story centers around an old southern family, the Chilcotes; Lewis Stone, Dorothy Jordan, and Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon on television's "Batman" series). Other name actors included Walter Huston, Robert Young, and Myrna Loy, Wallace Ford, and Jimmy Durante.The film is almost an epic as it covers a 15-year span from 1916 to 1931. During WWI Congress expands federal regulation with a wartime measure called the Food Control Act (regulating grain among other things). This leads to the ill-advised Volsted Act and the 18th Amendment outlawing liquor (insert nationwide "Prohibition"). But prohibition curtails only legal drinking, and gives criminal elements a huge base of potential customers. Although much of the demand is met by smuggling (especially from Canada) and domestic distillation, there is quick money to be made with bogus product. Criminals simply take bulk denaturated (meaning unfit to drink) cleaning fluid ( a mix of ethyl alcohol and methanol) and package it as a name brand product. The film shows an excellent sequence of this process.The film also shows the consequences of consuming this product; blindness or death. The intention of the film is not to promote drinking but to illustrate a bigger evil, the unintended consequences of the government's ill-advised attempt to prohibit the activity. "The Wet Parade" was a rare example of mainstream Hollywood's willingness to openly take a side in a political issue. In doing so they risked alienating a huge potential audience (the President had vetoed the original legislation and it took legions of pietistic voters to pass the 18th Amendment). The effectiveness of the "The Wet Parade" message no doubt contributed to the passage of the 21st Amendment the following year (1933), which repealed nationwide prohibition. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

[email protected] As Maltin notes in his yearbook: this film manages to be both anti-liquor and anti-prohibition. Presumably the viewer is supposed to conclude that moderate drinking is OK. There are some really good performances: both Lewis Stone and Walter Huston are superb in their respective halves of the film: Stone as a too-convivial Southern gentlemen, and Huston as the proprietor of a run-down hotel who cadges drinks or even steals to support his habit. We see both die as a result of their consumption. Then, having persuaded us of the evils of alcohol and shown us the arguments for government control, we see how prohibition, with its bootleggers,speakeasies and phony liquor made America's drinking habit worse; which is probably true. All the performances are good, especially Neil Hamilton as the southern son following in his father's footsteps. The one curiosity is Jimmy Durante, under contract with MGM at the time, which wasn't doing many musicals or comedies (his teaming with Buster Keaton achieving only modest success)as a federal agent, and to see him struggling to keep down his Ha-Cha-Cha routine. He even got to do a deathbed scene; and not too shabbily. It is a two hour movie that tries to do too much, and could easily have been cut down to one and a half hours. But Stone and Huston, with good supportm make this an eight for me.