Very disappointing...

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

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.

....just what a true pre-coder should be like!!! The opening shots instantly introduce you to the world of vice - "pick-ups" discreetly putting on their stockings while men lie, intoxicated, on the bed, bootleg hooch flowing freely and gangland shootings - just another night in the city.This was the last of 5 movies Mae Clarke made for Universal, who used her to great advantage as the weary prostitute in "Waterloo Bridge" and the monster menaced bride in "Frankenstein" (there is even an "in joke" in "Night World" about "Frankenstein"). She had such a fresh and natural charm that hasn't dated and it has always puzzled me why she didn't go further than leads in Bs and even smaller films."Night World" is like a minor league "Grand Hotel" (it seemed every studio had one) - events taking place over 24 hours in a night club - "Happys". For a short film (only 58 minutes) this movie packs in a lot of plot. Boris Karloff, despite having an extremely long career, seemed to be given more diverse roles at the start of his career. He plays "Happy" MacDonald, the proprietor of "Happy's Club" which as the movie progresses is anything but. He isn't very "happy" himself - he is tough on his staff but is being made a fool of by his faithless wife (very sultry Dorothy Reiver) and Klauss (Russell Hopton), his right hand man. Michael Rand (Lew Ayres) is a dissipated young millionaire who wanders drunkenly into the night club. His parents were involved in a sensational murder and he is slowly drinking himself to death to try to forget. His mother (Hedda Hopper) has been acquitted of the murder of his father, but Edith Blair (Dorothy Peterson) sees Michael at the club and gives him a motherly heart to heart talk about the way his mother really treated his father. Lew Ayres moment comes in a showdown with his mother, when he realises just how vicious her feelings are toward him and his father. On hand to administer sympathy and advice ("I'm trying to live long enough so I can see good liquor some day" she replies when Michael offers her a drink) is Mae Clarke (with a lovely fluffy perm) as Ruth Taylor, a young up and coming chorus girl ("You're in front of her - by about 10 years" says ungallant Ed Powell (George Raft) to another older chorus girl on why he prefers Ruth). Ed is too tough for Ruth and she proves her loyalty to Michael when a fight erupts. When the next day dawns, several people are dead and Ruth and Michael are on their way to a hopeful future.Like Clarke, Lew Ayres, also under contract at Universal, made the most of whatever part he was given but the studio couldn't give him the boost that guaranteed him permanent stardom - it was up to MGM and it's Doctor Kildare series to do that. There was no doubt that George Raft would be a star - his part was only that of a thug but his impact was immediate and memorable. Another actor you remembered was Clarence Muse as the philosophizing doorman.Some funny quotes - "I'm from Syracuse - Was your mother there at the time" - that was from a (to me) particularly racy scene played out in the Gentleman's toilet between a drunken patron and an obviously (it was from the early thirties) gay man who seemed determined to be picked up. "Will you do me a favour - No, why should I drop dead"!! - sweet talk on the dance floor. Busby Berkeley was the choreographer on the very cheeky "Who's Your Little Who-Zit" - his overhead shots of chorus cuties shows why he was out on his own.Highly, Highly Recommended.

Poor Mae Clark was in loads of films yet is most known for getting a grapefruit in the kisser from James Cagney in 'Public Enemy.' So it's nice to see her in a part with a few more brains. She is just part of an odd mixed-salad of a cast. Some, like Boris Karloff as an awkwardly gangly night-club owner, and Bert Roach as a silly drunk, seem to be in strange waters. Others, like Lew Ayers and George Raft, get roles typical of their young careers. Though she has only one scene in this very short film, Hedda Hopper steals the show as the world's worst mother.The only character to really warm to is The Doorman, Tim Washington (Clarence Muse). He is clearly in a horrible situation which those around pity at best and ignore at worst. So many African-American roles in the white films of the '30s are painful to watch, but Muse brings something special to this thankless part.Cinematographer Merritt Gerstad shows an inventive eye both in the opening montage and in scenes that would otherwise be nothing to look at. And of course, we get brief Busby Berkeley numbers, which would never really work in a night club, but allowances must be made for Hollywood.

Fun, saucy, fast-moving and short, Night World is a neat little movie from the early thirties, before Prohibition was repealed, when Hoover was still in the White House; and with a Depression still new there was yet a Gatsby mood in the cities. The credits of this movie are unusual. Busby Berkeley did the choreography. Alfred Newman composed what music there is. The cast is oddball for any sort of film, but especially peculiar for this kind: Lew Ayres, Mae Clarke, Boris Karloff, Hedda Hopper, George Raft and Jack La Rue. Director Hobart Henley handles his material extremely well, and gives it pace and energy. There is joy, sadness, corruption, disillusionment and heartbreak in the movie, and the ending is bittersweet but not downbeat.