My first thoughts were that if I'd been a pregnant woman watching this in 1932 it would have scared the life out of me. It's absolutely terrifying. Then again, a pregnant woman in 1932 would have known how dangerous giving birth was anyway.
Whilst I really didn't enjoy this it did make me spend a couple of hours googling death rates during childbirth and in hospitals generally over the last few hundred years. (An activity more interesting than watching this.) it does make you appreciate how incredibly lucky we are to be alive now rather than then. If you watch enough 1930s films, that era doesn't seem that long ago but it's not just the attitudes that were so different then, medical treatment was frighteningly primitive. This film will now ruin your enjoyment of Laurel and Hardy's COUNTY HOSPITAL. You'll forevermore be thinking that Ollie's going to die in that place. Thanks for that Warner Brothers!
Back to this film - it just doesn't work. It's like a dull episode of a dull hospital soap in which you don't know or care about the characters. I think it does actually try to be positive but maybe it couldn't be as optimistic as it would be if made today - it had be be realistic in the context of 1932 so is necessarily miserable. You'll wish you'd not watched this. Another reason to avoid this is it's got Eric Linden in it.
Whilst I really didn't enjoy this it did make me spend a couple of hours googling death rates during childbirth and in hospitals generally over the last few hundred years. (An activity more interesting than watching this.) it does make you appreciate how incredibly lucky we are to be alive now rather than then. If you watch enough 1930s films, that era doesn't seem that long ago but it's not just the attitudes that were so different then, medical treatment was frighteningly primitive. This film will now ruin your enjoyment of Laurel and Hardy's COUNTY HOSPITAL. You'll forevermore be thinking that Ollie's going to die in that place. Thanks for that Warner Brothers!
Back to this film - it just doesn't work. It's like a dull episode of a dull hospital soap in which you don't know or care about the characters. I think it does actually try to be positive but maybe it couldn't be as optimistic as it would be if made today - it had be be realistic in the context of 1932 so is necessarily miserable. You'll wish you'd not watched this. Another reason to avoid this is it's got Eric Linden in it.