Watch Remember Last Night? For Free

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

"Remember Last Night?" was billed as a sophisticated melodrama with laughs and boasted of four murders and an attempted suicide as a group of hard drinking socialites, after a wild night spent in an alcoholic haze find themselves involved in murder. It was lovely to see Constance Cummings really let her hair down as a wacky champagne drinking society girl and Robert Young, as always was at his dependable best, but to compare them to Nick and Nora Charles is laughable. The film had not much charm and while I am not familiar with James Whale's background, he seemed to be taking a satirical look at the idle rich but his direction really floundered. The only actors who seemed believable in their roles were Sally Eilers and Robert Armstrong as a sister and brother who had fought hard to shake off their shanty town background. And of course Arthur Treacher as the acidic tongued butler, whose tones dripped with sarcasm. Nick and Nora could fit in anywhere - from Park Avenue to Skid Row, Tony and Carlotta (Young and Cummings) seem caught in a time warp from the Roaring Twenties. I can't imagine this movie being at all popular with the average audience from the mid thirties for which the depression was still very real. Had James Whale lost touch with the movie going public??Tony and Carlotta wake up with a massive hangover to find their host dead. No one can really remember their movements and unfortunately things look bad for Tony - he was seen wandering around during the night with a knife and the chauffeur finds a blood stained rag in Tony's Bugatti. But everyone has a motive - the victim, Vic Huling (George Meeker), hadn't been particularly kind to his wife (Eilers) and their driver, Flannagan, (Armstrong) was getting pretty fed up about it. Vic had also been heavying Billy Arliss (as played by Monroe Owsley, he was just a hyped up bundle of nerves) for money he thought Billy owed him.Edward Arnold makes an appearance playing Edward Arnold, I mean police chief Danny Harrison but he could have been playing a racketeer for all the light and shade he gave the role. With him is Ed Brophy as surprise, surprise, a bumbling side kick. Tony enlists the aid of an eminent hypnotist (Gustav Von Seyffertitz) who is bought in to hypnotise each guest. "One of them was faking" he proclaims and is just about to announce the murderer when he is killed. Anyone familiar with programmers from the mid thirties will have no trouble picking the guilty party!!The liquor flows freely, surprisingly in a mid 1930s production - even at the end when Arnold chastizes them for drinking, stating "This is how this mess started in the first place", - the last shot of them is grabbing a bottle with the promise of "one last time". Constance Cummings was so much better in the 1940 "Busman's Holiday" with Robert Montgomery as Lord Peter Wimsey. Although she only appeared for less than a minute as Batiste's (Jack La Rue) not quite blind mother she made her part memorable.

James Whale's work in Hollywood is largely swept under the carpet by Universal. Except of course for his "Frankenstein" movie. "The Road Home" and "Remember last Night" are both (along with some other of his films) excellent entertainment and were butchered by Universal back the. I have written to scholars and Entertainment Moguls such as Robert Osborne and the Head of Universal Studios to release a restored Box Set of his work. I sincerely hope that Universal Studios will follows in the footsteps of Warner Brothers who recently have been releasing some of their classic movies as Box Set (such as the W. Powell / Myrna Loy Collection) - or as MOD (Manufactured on Demand). Warner has great success with this franchise and I hope that Universal will wake up as well and follow that example. The most recent releases of "UNIVERSAL VAULT" titles are tired, too few and not worth mentioning.

When I saw the opening credits announcing "A James Whale Production," I thought - yes, there will probably be outsized and grotesque sets, just like in Frankenstein. I wasn't mistaken. The weird decor of the house and restaurant where the action takes place is a movie in itself. The entire film plays like one big in-joke, like the sorts of things film studios put together to show to employees at Christmas parties.But that doesn't mean this movie isn't funny, and enjoyable. The two lead characters are the boozy, over the top kind that you know are going to get into more trouble than they can handle. To me, they were sort of a combination of Nick and Nora Charles, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Their wild party was one of the wildest you'll ever see on film, and no nudity or foul language, either. Of course, there is the matter of that really tasteless, racist bit at the party. I suppose in 1935 some would have considered that funny, but it is painful to watch.I really liked Constance Cummings. The only other thing I've seen her in is Blythe Spirit. She was very good here in a screwball mode, and she was cute and perky without being obnoxious about it. Robert Young was winning as her not very much more sober and serious husband. The whole mystery with all the suspects in one house thing was pretty silly, but I really think it was supposed to be. This film is to be viewed with tongue in cheek. It's a joke, and a funny one. It has all the stock characters you would expect to find in such an old-fashioned mystery - the rich and careless, the hardbitten law, the ex-con and suspicious (but innocent) servants, and that great, supercilious, snooty butler. Arthur Treacher was the master of that genre. I thought it was hilarious the way he made all those snide comments whenever he turned his head from his employers. The dialog is really very funny, and goes by fast, but not too fast.I thought the funniest scene by far was where the hero is racing his car to get home, and he almost collides with a truck at a road construction site. The truck driver lets loose a stream of curses, without actually uttering any four-letter words. And listen carefully for the very last thing he says -- well, I won't give it away -- it caps the whole scene and makes it even funnier.

This film seems to be an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the Thin Man, which came out the previous year, and while Young and Cummings are fine, they can't match either the urbanity or the chemistry of Powell and Loy. The acting is generally top-notch, although Sally Eilers' overwrought hysteria becomes really grating after awhile.The drinking here seems more witless and reckless than in the Thin Man; at one point speeding drunken driver Young barely misses being flattened by a train, resulting in general hilarity among his passengers. Several times he is shown going 90 mph while plastered, once with a police detective as a passenger! All very cute in 1935, I guess.There's a lot of amusing 30's banter, especially in the early part of the film. The plot is of the usual type for a murder mystery of the period, with the suspects gathered in the drawing room, and the announcement of the murderer's name, although there are some twists. I did think it was just a little bit too much to believe when the detective allowed the apparently guilty party to get a smoke from their own cigarette box--resulting in silly, cheap theatrics that added nothing to the plot.