Absolutely the worst movie.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It doesn't take long into the film to see Night Nurse is a very negative portrayal of the health service. Dr Kildare this is not and even makes 1934's Men In White come off as a more an idealised vision on the health care system in the 1930's; Night Nurse is anything but. All within the first ten minutes Barbara Stanwyck is turned down for the job as a nurse but then gets it after catching the fancy from a doctor, one of the interns is a pervert and Joan Blondell recommends tricking patients into thinking you've saved their life in order to get money out of them. Blondell's character in particular I really found myself loathing from an actress who normally played such likable characters. She clearly dislikes her profession and even recites the Florence Nightingale pledge while chewing gum. Night Nurse is a movie with a wide range of despicable human beings on display. There is even a scene which appears to show an actual baby in distress and another in which children talk about in graphic terms of the abuse they have received: not very comfortable viewing.Night Nurse is a perfect example of the kind of pictures Warner Bros produced during the 1930's; a thought provoking socially conscious melodrama. Whether or not it's exaggerated the plot of hospital corruption and the ineffectiveness of both the hospital and the authorities to prevent child abuse, the movie does succeed in packing a punch. What does it say when the intervention of gangsters is required to save the life of a child? Warner Bros where also known for featuring ethnic casts in their movies. At the beginning of the movie a shot focuses on a group of Chinese people sitting around a hospital bed speaking in their native language although here it doesn't have any bearing on the rest of the plot. There is also an emphasises that the shop which is broken into in order to steal milk for a bath in order to save the lives of malnourished children is from a Kosher delicatessen. Is there a particular reason for this? This was 1931 but history has made of this scene of the delicatessen windows being smashed unintentional creepy.The best reason to see Night Nurse though is Clark Gable in a role which I point to as proof of his acting ability. Gable is scary enough as a character who wants to murder children and isn't afraid to punch a woman but this is multiplied by the fact that he's dressed like a Nazi. OK not really, it's a chauffeur's uniform but when I first saw him wearing this, my instant reaction was "Why is he dressed like an SS officer?" He could have had a knack at playing villains; such unrealised potential. His character's introduction with the use of a camera zoom and the uttering of "I'm Nick...the chauffeur" gives me chills - melodramatic perfection.

" . . . can keep her mouth shut," we learn in NIGHT NURSE. Discretion is nine-tenths of the law, according to the Florence Nightengale Code recited in unison by a class of graduating nurses early in this movie. Barbara Stanwyck's "Nurse Lora" character is the fly in the ointment here, unwilling to play ball according to the Rules of Big Medicine. She cannot seem to remember that everyone has to die sometime, and that the Medical Profession needs to turn a handsome profit, just like any other. America's serial killers often gravitate to Her nursing homes, veteran's hospitals, and extended care facilities. It's an unwritten rule that nobody should get their noses out of joint UNTIL the miscreant has offed 35 to 40 patients OR a former U.S. President--whichever comes first. Doctors' country club fees don't grow on trees, so the NIGHT NURSE's boss physician naturally is upset when she resists his careful planning in starving two thrown away toddlers to control their trust fund. Hasn't Lora ever heard the expression, "Doctor knows best"?

A good but not great entry into the Stanwyck canon. In this one she becomes a nurse and gets into some predictable and some unpredictable situations - odd how customs of an earlier generation can seem quaint and out-of-date to succeeding ones. Often its seems they had short-cuts to solutions of dilemmas - medical and legal, for instance - that take us a great deal of time nowadays. Suffice it to say that she is the main reason to see this peculiar '30's artifact, and she delivers another startlingly plucky performance - as always,she is not as fragile as she seems.Check out Clark Gable in a one-dimensional performance as a brutal chauffeur, before he hit stardom. Ben Lyon does a very agreeable turn as her bootlegger boyfriend. And, not to mention the dependable Joan Blondell as her best pal.Don't get me wrong, it's interesting enough. It's just that the subject matter is way off the beaten track. Makes you wonder,did this type of situation ever arise in the '30's, or any other decade?

Barbara Stanwyck (as Lora Hart) is a hard-boiled nursing student who dates bootlegger Ben Lyon (as Mortie) while occasionally sharing a bed with gum-chewing chum Joan Blondell (as Maloney). Upon graduation, Ms. Stanwyck gets a job as "Night Nurse" to a pair of plump looking children; she suspects the well-fed looking kids are being starved to death, possibly by their drunken mother's gangster lover Clark Gable (as Nick, the chauffeur). Soon, Stanwyck is in great danger…Delightfully lurid melodrama, with star Stanwyck in fine form (she and Blondell are seen are often shown undressing, by the way). Full of things they couldn't do, say, or show in movies after the Hays Production Code began enforcing its standards on all motion pictures released on or after July 1, 1934. Today, it's a fun William A. Wellman directed film. ****** Night Nurse (7/16/31) William A. Wellman ~ Barbara Stanwyck, Ben Lyon, Clark Gable, Joan Blondell