December 24 movie: Man Alive. This movie was creepy. It's about a guy (Pay O'Brien) who has an argument with his wife, gets drunk and trades coats with a wino. The two are in a car accident and the wino dies, but everyone thinks it's O'Brien who died. Adolphe Menjou finds O'Brien and takes him home, only to discover that another man (Rudy Vallee) has already moved in on his wife. Menjou convinces O'Brien that he'll have a better chance of driving Vallee off and winning his wife back if he stays dead and pretends to be a ghost haunting her.
Because O'Brien is both an idiot and a bastard, he goes for this idea and spends the rest of the movie tormenting his poor wife. Then he dresses up as his own Uncle Barney from Killarney. In other words, wacky hijinks all over the place.
The worst part is when Menjou's family track down the wino's long lost son and bring him to meet O'Brien, who they think is the wino. O'Brien and Menjou pretend O'Brien is the kid's father and lock him in a room. The poor guy's search for his father -- who by the way, is dead -- is treated as just more wacky hijinks. That kid is the only sympathetic character in the movie. All he wants is to forgive his father and spend time with him.
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