classicsoncall Jack Benny probably could have cut himself some slack over this picture, after all, it was all virtually a dream sequence so none of it had to make any sense. And if his acting was less than exemplary - dream sequence! He looked older than thirty nine - dream sequence! You see, it's easy to blame it all on the dream sequence business.Usually it's this type of picture that irritates me but this time you know it's a dream right up front so you can go along with the premise. The writers put together some clever gimmicks like the hourly twinges endured by Osidro (Allyn Joslyn) and Doremus (John Alexander), along with Slippy Tompkins' Tomcats and Tarzola the Rocket Man. The hotel elevator business was kind of a neat touch too.OK, so it's not Oscar material but who expected that? I always liked jack Benny as a performer, even though I prefer his variety show format and TV sketches. As a member of the Third Phalanx, Fifteenth Cohort, he did a reasonable enough job here to garner a few chuckles. All the rest of it - well, dream sequence.

edwagreen Absolutely inane film starring Jack Benny as a trumpet player who dreams that he has been sent down to earth to end it by blowing on his trumpet.The writing here is absolutely ridiculous as the film turns mostly into a slap-stick farce, with all sorts of silly situations created by Benny and his cohorts.Watch for Ethel Griffies, of all people, to briefly kick up her heels. Franklin Pangborn, with his usual sneers, provides some comedy relief, and Reginald Gardiner is just too Reginald Gardiner to play a villain here.Alexis Smith is wasted as Benny's fellow angel,and Mike Mazursky is his usual heavy-handed henchman.Margaret Dumont's comic gifts are also wasted here, as she appears briefly in two scenes.

winter24601 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.

Gavno 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.