Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

WC Fields' last starring vehicle has to be seen to be believed, and even then it probably won't be; it's constructed like one of his tallest stories, drunkenly veering from improbability to improbability, and produced with loving carelessness as Fields' hopeful scriptwriter tries to sell a story to the long-suffering Franklin Pangborn. The itinerary takes in the Esoteric Film Studios, a Russian colony in Mexico, and a neighbouring mountain top inhabited by the man-eating Mrs Hemogloben, played by a very raucous Margaret Dumont. But Fields' true co-star is the horrid singing moppet Gloria Jean, and for all the master's visual and verbal nonsense, the total result is more perverse than funny.