calvinnme ...then this is a James Whale movie that you will like! Riding high after Bride of Frankenstein (a film mentioned in the dialogue) James Whale chose to make this bizarre mating of The Thin Man with The Old Dark House, partly so he could get out of directing Dracula's Daughter (also mentioned here - did any other director so love in-jokes?).Rich, spoiled, and zany socialites Robert Young and Constance Cummings attend a drinking party with their equally alcoholic Long Island friends (Whale lovingly shows them cavorting among some mind-boggling art-deco sets) and perform such charming antics as destroying expensive furniture, driving drunk, and firing a cannon at a passing ship. The next morning the party goers wake up to find one of them has been murdered, but they were so drunk they can't remember what happened (the film is based on a novel called The Hangover Murders, but the Hays Office would not permit that title to be used).Cummings and Young remind me as much of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald as Nick and Nora Charles, and the wild party seems like a nostalgic holdover from the 1920s. It's hard to be believe depression audiences would be entertained by such aimless and destructive shenanigans. Perhaps Whale identified with the characters' self indulgence.Cummings and Young aren't even the main sleuths - that role belongs to Edward Arnold, who storms into the film after the party section and proceeds to bellow and bark his way through the role. Arnold could show charm even as a heavy in films like Diamond Jim and The Toast Of New York, so I choose to blame his misjudged performance on Whale.Aside from Whale, this film's main interest comes from its sets, its alcoholism, and the presence of the under-appreciated Constance Cummings, who might have been a major star if she had not left the US for the UK with her British husband, screenwriter Benn Levy. This and Harold Lloyd's Movie Crazy were her best Hollywood roles.

blanche-2 When a man is found murdered after a night of carousing, a husband and wife set out to solve the crime in "Remember Last Night," a 1935 film directed by James Whale and starring Robert Young and Constance Cummings. They certainly did a lot of partying in the '30s, but the partying in this film is on a new level. Everyone is so drunk that the next morning, no one can remember a thing about what happened the night before and how one of their friends ended up dead."Remember Last Night" is along the lines of the Thin Man (with more booze, if you can believe it), "Fast and Loose," "Star of Midnight," etc. - the lighthearted man-woman crime-solving genre so popular in the '30s. What sets this one apart is the shameless drunkenness, which raises drinking to a new art form, and an appalling display of people wearing blackface masks and talking jive in one part of the movie.Constance Cummings and Robert Young play the couple, and they're delightful. Cummings is beautiful, sophisticated, and sparkles as the wife. An accomplished stage actress who lived to be 95, Cummings appeared as Mary Tyrone to Olivier's James in an acclaimed "Long Day's Journey into Night" and in her seventies toured the country in "Wings," about a stroke victim. Here she is young and dazzling. Robert Young does very well in a role normally played by Robert Montgomery or William Powell - he's younger, and gives the part just the right playful touch. He lived to be 91, so maybe there was something in whatever passed for booze in the movie. Edward Arnold, Reginald Denny, and Arthur Treacher provide solid support.This is a somewhat convoluted mystery - it was hard to follow even being sober, so just think what the characters went through. If you can get into the spirit of it (pardon the pun), it's fun, and as well, it's a great commentary on the times - and how they have changed.

dennisb-6 It's a wild party all right, with a lot of content that would curl the hair of the average movie- goer nowadays. While we in the 21st Century have been brutalized to boredom by the sight of a person's entrails being blown via shotgun blast onto the walls like some kind of macabre Rorshach, these folks would have been mortified at such a sight. But abuse people? While mid-party, even before the first piece of significant action, we are treated to profligate drinking, both individual and group (You have to see this to believe it.), impaired driving, racism (The most embarrassing and shamefacedly tacky minstrel-take-off I've ever seen!), vandalism, reckless endangerment, resisting arrest and dangerous driving.Notwithstanding, the movie is an instructive social exhibit of a time when, during the depth of the worst depression in history, these brutes marauded carelessly while the world burned around them. Never has a house staff been so clearly cast as in utter disgust of their employer's very existence.Overall, a terrific example of its time. Fun, too, even if it's darn near too nasty to live.

Film-Fan "Remember Last Night?" is a movie relic from an era when Hollywood stars held a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. (in this case, MANY drinks...)Director James Whale (best remembered for "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein") opens his film with the wildest alcohol-drenched party ever put on celluloid. The plot thickens the next morning when one of the partygoers is found dead..and no one can recall anything about the previous evening (hence the title of the movie!) Robert Young and Constance Cummings star as the upper-class ringleaders of the pickled partiers with Edward Arnold playing the frustrated detective trying to solve the case.Poking fun at excessive drinking would never fly in today's politically correct world, but in 1935 James Whale pulled it off flawlessly!