A pharmacist who is too weak to turn down a crooked money-making opportunity, a charming villain who takes things too far (and gets a bath he will instantly forget about) and two blonde wise-crackers are the focus of this 60 minute B pre-code sleeper where a definite moral tale is disguised behind typical tough Warner Brothers dialog. Charles Farrell, after years of silent melodramas and perky early musicals with Janet Gaynor, is the owner of a neighborhood pharmacy which caters to the variety of characters who live in the neighborhood. A young Bette Davis is first seen selling an ice cream cone to the stereotypical Jewish teen Sidney Miller (a staple of many of these Warner Brothers pre-code films) who debates the need for the government all of a sudden charging tax and also expresses shock at the idea of ice cream served in a bowl rather than on a cone. Miller reappears briefly several times throughout the film making wisecracks which amuses Davis with their oddness. He's more appealing to her than the people who come in mainly for change, a postal stamp or to insist that owner Farrell change the brand of beer he sells. One visitor attempts to buy the drugstore as part of a chain yet disappears once the plot thickens thanks to beer baron Ricardo Cortez whose goon Allen Jenkins had made strong suggestions to Davis about Farrell changing the beer. Cortez finds out that Farrell can make the same creams, toothpastes and headache powders that a major brand does and sell them for less without the overhead of advertising. This upsets Davis who sees the sordidness of using the brand's name to make money and ultimately brings on violence thanks to the betrayal of Cortez's mistress (Glenda Farrell) who pays the ultimate price for being honest.
Brisk, fast-moving and filled with witty dialog which made the Warner Brothers pre-code films the most delightful of that genre, this also has a slight element of horror to it with the sudden violent end of one of the characters in the climax that seems like something out of a Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff horror film from Universal. There's a catfight between Farrell and the bitchy Renee Whitney as her competition for Cortez and a shocking scene where one of the victims of Cortez's theft of their product name takes a desperate way out as profits fall. Cortez is light-hearted and charming throughout, an interesting companion villain to Edward G. Robinson's "Little Caesar" and James Cagney's "Public Enemy" in earlier pre-code films. Some of the characters come in and out so fast they seem to have no character resolution and this is perhaps the film's one major weakness, seemingly either an editing of the film shot or deletions from the script. But nonetheless, there's also the comparison to today's pharmaceutical field which has de-humanized the importance of personal attention both in the medical profession and in dispensing medicine altogether. Films like this, the "Dr. Kildare" series and many of the classic T.V. medical shows prove that the old fashioned care wasn't so bad after all and make you wonder what the world of the Hippocratic oath has come to.
Brisk, fast-moving and filled with witty dialog which made the Warner Brothers pre-code films the most delightful of that genre, this also has a slight element of horror to it with the sudden violent end of one of the characters in the climax that seems like something out of a Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff horror film from Universal. There's a catfight between Farrell and the bitchy Renee Whitney as her competition for Cortez and a shocking scene where one of the victims of Cortez's theft of their product name takes a desperate way out as profits fall. Cortez is light-hearted and charming throughout, an interesting companion villain to Edward G. Robinson's "Little Caesar" and James Cagney's "Public Enemy" in earlier pre-code films. Some of the characters come in and out so fast they seem to have no character resolution and this is perhaps the film's one major weakness, seemingly either an editing of the film shot or deletions from the script. But nonetheless, there's also the comparison to today's pharmaceutical field which has de-humanized the importance of personal attention both in the medical profession and in dispensing medicine altogether. Films like this, the "Dr. Kildare" series and many of the classic T.V. medical shows prove that the old fashioned care wasn't so bad after all and make you wonder what the world of the Hippocratic oath has come to.