Mr. Satan complains: 'All this business of people going to Heaven has got to stop!' This weird MGM 16 minute short film in an early technicolor process is one of the weirdest films I have ever seen. It culminates in a ballet, with music composed by Dimitri Tiomkin, with girls in red tutus wearing devil's horns prancing beneath a gigantic face of a horned Satan. It is meant to be a riotously funny musical comedy, and the jokes are just about as corny as you can get, such as: 'That's the hell of it!' Satan's Vice President gets hold of St. Peter on the phone and accuses him of stealing all their clients. The film is saucy and sexy, what is known as 'pre-Code', before the ridiculous censorship code of the Hays Office was enforced, which meant that everything must be toned down and married couples on screen were only allowed to sleep in double beds. This film is so outrageous that it would be nice if it were really funny, or really entertaining at least, but I thought that it was a complete flop. Some of the jokes were funny in theory but were delivered so badly that it was impossible to laugh or even chuckle. The acting is so ridiculous, the film so badly made, the jokes so feeble, the dancing so absurd, that this strange curiosity should have been left in the cabinet.
Review of The Devil's Cabaret
The Devil's Cabaret
(1930)
'It takes a lot of money to keep the fires burning down here'
18 December 2013