It's in the Bag!

Fred Allen kicks things off by roasting the opening credits, "get a load of this mob! They're all relatives of the producer," that includes the director. Turns out the murdered millionaire's heir runs a flea circus, the headlines have it ("Cootie Coach Cops Cash!"). Off to the upper-crust with the missus (Binnie Barnes) and brainiac Junior and the daughter engaged to the son of the pest exterminator (Robert Benchley), the only problem is that the fortune is stashed in one of five chairs scattered across town. "I don't mind giving the bride away from a cozy little cell in Sing Sing, but how am I going to throw rice when I'm strapped in the electric chair?" Ilf and Petrov provide a choice chassis for Allen's hangdog sourness, a grab bag of absurdist non sequiturs and cameos for him to blink his pouchy peepers at. A visit to a certain Mrs. Nussbaum (Minerva Pious), a look into Jack Benny's process ("I laugh first, and then I think back until I come to a joke"). The hatcheck girl in the closet, the aquarium for catching mice. The quack shrink (Jerry Colonna) slaps imaginary insects until he's recommended flypaper, "since when can a fly read?" The infernal centerpiece posits Kafka's castle as a movie palace playing Zombies in the Attic, standing room only, the realm of El Ángel Exterminador and no mistake. Pit stop at Phil's Naughty Nineties for a barbershop quartet with Don Ameche, Rudy Vallee and Victor Moore ("Times got tough, I had to do something"), on the hot seat with William Bendix and his oversized vitamin bottle. "So much for the hoi polloi." Brooks has The Twelve Chairs, along the way there's Fleischer's So This Is New York. With John Carradine, Sidney Toler, George Cleveland, John Miljan, Ben Welden, Gloria Pope, William Terry, and Dickie Tyler. In black and white.