JasonLeeSmith

This film is a bleak joyless train-wreck of a movie. It has no plot, no budget, and the acting is horrible. The premise of the movie is that the Master worships a demon in exchange, I suppose, for the ability to wed many women, all of whom he keeps in suspended animation in some room that is like a crypt or something. A typical middle-class family gets lost while going on vacation and winds up having to stay the night in the Master's home. All the wives wake up and bicker about whether the Master should marry the woman and her six year old daughter who are staying the night. It's a kind of creepy insight into the mind of the man who made the movie, actually. Not much more than that, though. No plot, no action, and a horribly depressing ending.

The only reason I ever watched this movie is that I had heard that the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment of it was pretty funny. Sadly Joel and the bots couldn't even make this one worthwhile.

Like probably 90% of the people writing reviews for this movie, I saw this on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Joel and the bots did an excellent job of riffing on this movie, and I thought that it was one of the funnier episodes.

This being said, however, this wasn't a particularly horrible movie. Especially compared to some of films they ran on MST3K.

It had it's weaknesses: the movie had about zero budget and so things like the costumes and set design were horrible. The plot, also, digressed in spots. On the whole, though, the acting was competent and the story held my interest. I actually found myself caring about the characters.

It wasn't a perfect movie, but it was nowhere near as bad as the usual MST3k fare such as "Giant Gila Monster" and "Manos Hand of Fate." As such, it doesn't really deserve to be mocked as much as it has been. It was a B-Movie from the 50s, but it was a watchable one.

I found this to be the most entertaining of all the "Big Broadcast" movies. This isn't saying much, since these films were mainly just mash-ups of all the big names in radio that year, doing sketches independently of one another and strung together into a movie.

This one, however, has a very strong and entertaining plot. Jack Benny plays a sardonic radio executive, with Ray Milland as his slightly oilier second-in-command. George Burns and Gracie Allen play radio sponsors, which is just an excuse to trot them out and do their shtick (but what a great shtick it was). Shirley Ross plays the young ingénue who comes to New York to find stardom on the radio.

It was probably Ross who impressed me the most, she seems to have been a very funny actress with a great singing voice. It's a pity she didn't have more of a career in films.

Jack Benny, I think, was better suited to playing the wise-cracking supporting character -- as he did in this film -- as compared to the leading man. He was not a very good actor and had a lifelong difficulty memorizing lines. He was great here, though, playing a sarcastic cynic, a character in direct contrast with the miserly wannabe character he played on the radio.

It is also worth noting that I think this is Benny's only film pairing with his best friend, George Burns. The two don't have much to do together, but it's nice to see, just the same.

A final note: Bob Burns also has a very funny role in this movie as a Hillbilly who keeps interrupting radio shows trying to find Leopold Stokowski. He wants to find the maestro to show him a musical instrument he has invented. It is a long black tube that you blow into. Burns used it on his own radio show. He called it a "bazooka." Turns out, that's where the weapon got it's name. See how much we owe to radio?