The World Gone Mad (USA, 1933)

 

"Someone wanted Henderson out of the way because he was in the way!"

Lionel Houston (Neil Hamilton)

Another poorly cropped and bleached and scratchy pre-code public domain movie that you can find floating all over the web and on innumerable compilation DVDs, The World Gone Mad supposedly also saw re-releases under the titles The Public Be Damned and The Public Be Hanged — but we were unable to find any visual documentation online of the last two supposed titles. Oddly enough, the movie often finds its way onto public domain horror movie compilations, where it truly does not belong. It is a crime movie, not a horror flick.

Made by Majestic Pictures, a pretty much forgotten Poverty Row production company that did a few films of note — The Vampire Bat (1933), for example — before being swallowed by Republic Pictures, The World Gone Mad does reveal, despite some of the name actors participating, its low-budget roots in the occasionally somewhat threadbare production and flimsy sets. Luckily, other sets manage to convey enough money (due to size or opulence or even the number of extras) that the film looks less barely budgeted than tightly budgeted.

The movie is a mid-career directorial project of the hardworking William Christy Cabanne (16 Apr 1888 – 15 Oct 1950), a man known, alongside with Sam Newfield ([6 Dec 1899 — 10 Nov 1964], see: The Monster Maker [1944]) and William Beaudine (15 Jan 1892 – 18 Mar 1970), as one of the most prolific directors in American films. Among the over 100 movies Cabanne directed, you find no undisputed (or even disputed) classic, but you do find some fun movies, like the generic Old Dark House "horror" One Frightened Night (1935 / full movie); Universal's second mummy film, The Mummy's Hand (1940 / trailer), a fun flick that actually cannibalizes some footage from the first, The Mummy (1932); and Bela Lugosi's only color movie, Scared to Death (1946). The World Gone Mad, the content and narrative of which bears little resemblance to its title, may not be a "classic" (real or lesser) per se, but despite its age and concomitant creakiness, it is a watchable and interesting little obscurity that easily counts as one of Cabanne's better movies.

Still, as always, Cabanne's direction is rather stodgy and workmanlike, though there is one true visually creative flourish that is so out of place with the rest of the movie that it draws attention to itself: a dolly shot up to and into a calendar, at which point the displayed image becomes the opening of the next scene. It is a shame that Cabanne didn't do more fun stuff like that in this and his other movies, as most of his work — as is much of this movie — is staid (as in: point and shoot and edit) to the point of visual somnolence.

One other interesting sequences in the movie that definitely isn't somnolent — both in regard to editing and its reflection of the capitalist system — is the perfectly timed montage going from one person to the next as the $30,000 contract to kill the local district attorney works its way down from subcontractor to cheaper and shabbier contractor, much in the way many "jobs" normally go in our capitalist system, until it reaches the hand of the obvious immigrant, the swarthy-skinned and slightly oily-looking, Casanova's-Memoirs-reading hitman Ramon Salvadore (J. Carrol Naish [21 Jan. 1896 – 24 Jan 1973] of The Monster Maker [1944], House of Frankenstein [1944], The Beast with Five Fingers [1946] and Dracula vs Frankenstein [1971]). Yep, then like now, immigrants do our dirty work.

The narrative weaved by scriptwriter Edward T. Lowe Jr. (29 June 1880 – 19 April 1973), whose numerous projects include The Vampire Bat (1933), Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945 / trailer), keeps the tale relatively tight if a bit too leisurely, with only a few overt meanderings into the unnecessary — indeed, one character who initially comes across as totally unnecessary, the dizzy telephone operator Susan (Inez Courtney [12 Mar 1908 – 5 Apr 1975] of The Raven [1935 / trailer]), unexpectedly proves rather essential to the movie's resolution.

On the whole, the characterizations are perhaps a bit to stock, if not stereotypical — the lawmen, honest; the reporter, a womanizing wisecracker; the bad guys, oily or suave; the woman, little more than appendages to the men's arms; etc. — but to expect something other in films of that time is perhaps disingenuous.

Although the movie does uphold the precepts and concept of law and justice, The World Gone Mad's narrative has a unique, overall capitalism-critical attitude: in the end, all but one of the big businessmen in the movie are just as criminally and morally corrupt as those of the underworld, concerned only in profits and themselves, and willing to have someone killed to ensure their status quo remains as it is.*

* Times have changed little since then. Down with capitalism. Eat the rich. Ban the Republican party. Put Trump in Epstein's cell. Spitball the religious right.

In the end, however, scriptwriter Edward T. Lowe Jr.'s resolution offers an iota of (idealistic and ultimately unconvincing) hope by revealing one of the businessmen to care so much for the little people that he would prefer death to ensure their well-being. (Either Lowe had a flawed sense of reality or those higher up put on some pressure to add that fairytale concept.) An interesting but seldom seen aside that almost goes unnoticed in the events is the fact that one female character is obviously the shared mistress of two of the bad guys.

The narrative concerns the murder of upright Dist. Atty. Avery Henderson (the usually uncredited character actor Wallis Clark [2 March 1882 – 14 February 1961] of Mystery of the Wax Museum [1933 / trailer] and The Lady and the Monster [1944 / full film]), which is staged to look like love-nest argument gone deathly wrong and becomes a reputation-ruining scandal, to the disbelieving indignity of his wife, Evelyn (Geneva Mitchell [3 Feb 1908 – 10 Mar 1949), and both of his two best friends, the [stock character] wisecracking reporter Andy Terrell (Pat O'Brien [11 Nov 1899 – 15 Oct 1983) of Some Like it Hot [1959 / trailer] and so much more]) and Henderson's equally upstanding subsequent DA replacement Lionel Houston (Neil "Commissioner Gordon" Hamilton [9 Sept 1899 – 24 Sept 1984] of the unsung minor classic waiting to be rediscovered Terror Aboard (1933 / full film), The Devil's Hand (1961 / full film) and, of course, Batman: The Movie [1966 / trailer]). And thus the two begin, in their own way, to pursue the truth, to the displeasure of all those involved in the original murder and cover-up... 

So, in the end: The World Gone Mad is a tight, oddly mesmerizing if notably slow crime flick with a nice cast of familiar faces* and adequate acting, although much of the dialogue is pontificated and a bit too loudly recorded. The anti-capitalist mood of the narrative peters out towards the end, with one of the film's two climaxes showing that the toppest guy ain't a bad man after all, and the two investigations come to a head thanks to a surprisingly unseen twist. Fans of the old movies of yesteryear can't go wrong with The World Gone Mad; those of the age who multitask no matter what they do, on the other hand, will find the movie creaky and uninteresting. You know which hat fits best...

* Including, aside those already mentioned, Evelyn Brent ([20 Oct 1895 – 4 June 1975], above, of The Seventh Victim [1943 / trailer] and Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command [1928 / a trailer] and Underworld [1927/ full film]) as the duplicitous bad gal Carlotta Lamont; Louis Calhern ([19 Feb 1895 – 12 May 1956] of The Asphalt Jungle [1950 / trailer] and Blackboard Jungle [1955 / trailer]) as Christopher Bruno, the suave but thoroughly corrupt gangster; Richard Tucker ([4 Jun 1884 – 5 Dec 1942] of The Bat Whispers [1930] and The Unholy Three [1929 / full film]) as Graham Gaines, the narcissistic and greedy big businessman with Trump-like morals; and the forgotten John St. Polis ([24 Nov 1873 – 8 Oct 1946] of The Phantom of the Opera [1925 / full film] and The Unknown [1927]) as Grover Cromwell, the blindsided businessman who, unlike big businessmen in real life, gives a damn.

The full film –

The World Gone Mad: