Madam Satan

Another movie that I watched over the weekend that's available on DVD from the Warner Archive is the early talkie Madam Satan.

Kay Johnson plays Angela Brooks, one of those wealthy housewives commonly found in early talkies who have husbands in the business of business or something; it usually seems as if the husbands are really more in the business of going to nightclubs and returning home at some hour of the morning. Indeed, Angela tells her maid that her husband Bob (Reginald Denny) is away on business, but she sees him come in with his best friend Jimmy (Roland Young) around breakfast time. The two are so drunk that they proceed to get in the shower with their clothes on.

Angela then reads in the paper that Mr. Brooks appeared in night court on a DWI charge along with Jimmy, and Mrs. Brooks. Of course, Angela knows she wasn't in any courtroom the night before, which obviously means there was a strange woman around, and that Bob probably has a mistress. She finds the woman's address, and when Jimmy claims it's his new wife (as if anybody would beleive that), she goes to the address (as if she didn't know where Jimmy lives already). Trixie (Lillian Roth) is a chorus girl, and she's none too pleased that Jimmy is trying to save her honor by passing her off as his wife instead of Bob's mistress. One of those painfully unfunny bedroom comedies of lies ensues.

Jimmy, meanwhile, is planning a charity costume ball on board the zeppelin that's going to be moored at the mooring station just outside the city. Bob and Trixie are going to be there, but somehow Angela never got invited, which of course makes no sense. But she decides she's going to go, and wears a mask, dressed as "Madam Satan", and drawing all the men's attention. Of course, her real plan is to seduce her own husband without him knowing who she is. (She puts on a French accent so that he won't recognize her voice; at least they got that bit of continuity correct.)

All goes well until a storm comes up and makes it too risky to be on the zeppelin. But the guests stay anyway, until it gets hit by lightning and starts to break up, forcing the guests to parachute off. But will everybody be able to get off safely?

Madam Satan is a bizarre little movie, thanks to its having been made at the dawn of the sound era. There were any number of movies at the time that tried to throw a lot of disparate things together, with one of the most memorable for me being Just Imagine. The first half of Madame Satan is a stage-bound play almost, with the second half being a musical disaster movie. It doesn't all work, notably the slow and terribly unfunny first half. The costumes and sets of the second half, however, are much more interesting.

Madam Satan ultimately ends up as a curiousity of its time that probably needs to be seen once, but isn't the sort of movie I'd want to watch a second time.