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.
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.