To me, this movie is perfection.

Such a frustrating disappointment

Please don't spend money on this.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Fun, somewhat bizarre pre-coder about one night at a nightclub and the assorted people there. Worth a look for the great cast and the odd mixture of gangster movie and musical comedy. Lew Ayres plays a rich guy drowning himself in drink because his mom killed his dad. Mae Clarke plays a showgirl who helps him. The two fall in love quickly, Old Hollywood style. They have a cute chemistry. Great support from Boris Karloff, Clarence Muse, George Raft, Bert Roach, Dorothy Revier, and, hey, there's future gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Also features a forgettable number choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Ayres is fine but upstaged by the rest of the cast, especially Clarke and Muse. It's from Universal although it seems a bit like it's trying to be a WB movie. A good way to pass an hour. There's also a Frankenstein joke, although Karloff is not in that particular scene.

Deliciously seedy, this hour long pre- code drama with music is a gem of writing, photography, prohibition era violence, slang and tough luck. It's filled with a vision of Times Square as it once was: delightfully seedy in that Damon Runyon way where guys and dolls traveled along the big street to forget their woes in alcohol soaked nightspots like this, rub shoulders with the rich, the poor, the notorious and the desperate. This takes several of the songs later used in "42nd Street" and the "Gold Diggers" films and gives a dramatic interpretation of what they were all about. A Busby Berkley choreographed musical number, "Who's your little who?" Features chorus girls gossiping while showing more than just a lot of leg, dealing with various types of customers, and introducing the film's troubled hero, Lew Ayres, and later introducing him to chorus girl Mae Clarke. Clarence Muse gets some of the best moments as the wise doorman, a rare opportunity to see a black character treated with respect, often smarter than the wealthy patrons and hard boiled gangsters and chorus girls.Then there are Boris Karloff and George Raft, co-stars in the same year's "Scarface", cast in the gangster parts, providing the crime element of the story. Future gossip legend Hedda Hooper is prevalent among the supporting cast as Ayres' husband killing mother This is a film students of the prohibition era should study, because it remains as fresh as it was 85 years ago. I'm surprise that this film didn't usher in the code era before 1932, although I'm glad they held out for a few more years.

The opening montage of this delirious slice of pre-Code life amounts virtually to a declaration of intent, as various New Yorkers hit the town in pursuit of sex, booze and violence. You can practically hear the scratch of pencils from the bluestockings in the audience whose increasingly persistent calls to put a stop to the depiction of just this sort of depravity would soon, alas, be calling the shots in Hollywood. In just 58 minutes, 'Night World' depicts illegal booze ("they can make it faster than you can drink it"), homosexuality (in the flouncing form of "MISTER Baby", played by a very young Byron Foulger before he grew his moustache) and adultery as facts of life; and comes dangerously close to condoning the latter in the scene in which Hedda Hopper appears as Lew Ayres' ghastly mother who shot his father for an improbably innocent dalliance with another woman. (It also takes a rather callously casual view of violent death when the bullets start seriously flying in the film's finale).A couple of previous reviewers have compared 'Night World' to a low rent 'Grand Hotel'; with Merritt Gerstad's extraordinarily mobile camera weaving it's way throughout the joint picking up one set of characters and then another rather as Robert Altman would later do. Presiding over 'Happy's Place' is a tall, lisping, English-accented proprietor called "Happy" MacDonald, played by - of all people - a third-billed and fascinatingly miscast Boris Karloff. The women all look magnificent - all that bobbed hair and bare shoulders! - and a sweet blonde Mae Clarke is permitted a sunnier characterisation than we are accustomed to seeing her get a chance to play. It's a blast to see her actually dancing in the lineup on the floor show (with appropriately lascivious choreography courtesy of Busby Berkeley himself)! The name of the prolific Hobart Henley often crops up in filmographies from the early thirties, but after 'Night World' he only directed one more film. On the strength of this I'd sure like to see some of his others.

You can certainly tell that "Night World" is a pre-code picture. It's set in a speakeasy--just the sort of sordid locale that wouldn't have been allowed after the new Production Code went into effect in mid-1934. Of course, by then alcohol was legal and speakeasies were a thing of the past anyways. The film is very much like a soap opera--with a variety of folks and love affairs going on during the course of the picture.Several story lines are going on at the same time in this film and at then end, they all converge. One story is about the owners of the club, Happy (Boris Karloff) and Jill. However, Jill is cheating on her hubby and the way this story ends is pure dynamite. The main story involves a young man who's been drinking himself into oblivion (Lew Ayres). Why and his relationship with a girl who works in the club (Mae Clark) is fascinating. Finally, the doorman (Clarence Muse) has something going on with his sick wife. Again, all three stories converge at the end for a very slick and tense finale.I rarely give short films like this such high scores. However, with this one, the writing was so good and the ending so enjoyable I highly recommend it. Thrilling and enjoyable throughout.By the way, the dance numbers, though smaller in scale than his trademark choreography, were directed by Busby Berkeley.