W.C. Fields in THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER (1933) – And it ain’t a fit night out for man nor beast!

As parody (in this case, of old stage melodramas), The Fatal Glass of Beer was ahead of its time. Roundly panned upon its initial release for its cheap look and over-the-top acting, its sense of bad taste is positively quaint in this post-Mel Brooks era. Plus, it’s still funny as all get-out.

Fields plays Mr. Snavely who, with his wife (Rosemary Theby), live in a modest cabin in the Yukon at the turn of the century. The Snavelys have a son named Chester (George Chandler), who left his modest home to go find his way in the big city, only to be arrested and jailed after stealing some bonds. We find this out in a song that Snavely torturously sings to a visiting Mountie (played by Rychard Cramer, frequent villain of Laurel & Hardy comedies), as well as hammily acted flashbacks that accompany the song.

Besides the inevitable, bathetic reunion of Chester with his parents, much of the movie’s comedy comes from what we could kindly call its lack of mise-en-scene. At one point, Snavely goes “over the rim” with his team of sled dogs, one of whom is so spindly that his paws don’t even touch the ground. As Snavely repeatedly commands the dogs to “Mush!”, he swallows some of the fake snow that has been lobbed at him and observes, “Tastes more like cornflakes!”

Whereas in most W.C. Fields comedies whose cheapness and lack of coherency are to be taken at face value, The Fatal Glass of Beer presents those debits as comic relief to what we’d have had to endure if the melodrama had been played straight. The movie is a real hoot.