Roadhouse Nights (1930)
- Directed by
- Hobart Henley
- Genre
- crime film
- Country
- United States
- Runtime
- 1h 08m
- Rating
- 6.0 of 10 from 3 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A gangster film set in a roadhouse where a singer and her colleagues get entangled with criminals. The story mixes musical performances with a crime plot involving bootleggers and a murder investigation.
livelymusicalmelodramaticpre-codefast-pacedcomedicgrittytonally mixed
What happens
Roadhouse Nights is a 1930 American pre-Code gangster film. A number of sources including Sally Cline in her book Dashiell Hammett Man of Mystery claim it is based on the novel Red Harvest written by Dashiell Hammett (author of The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and The Glass Key). However the credits of the film itself say only "An Original Screenplay by Ben Hecht." Hammett receives no mention at all (and the plots are not similar). The movie, an amalgam of musical comedy and gangster melodrama, was directed by Hobart Henley, stars Helen Morgan, Charles Ruggles, and Fred Kohler, and features a rare screen musical comedy performance by Jimmy Durante, in his screen debut, with his vaudeville partners Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson ("Clayton, Jackson, and Durante"). Helen Morgan also sings It Can't Go On Like This, by Jay Gorney and Yip Harburg. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
The Czar of Broadway (1930)
The Pay-Off (1930)
Shooting Straight (1930)
Children of Chance (1930)
The Doorway to Hell (1930)
The Way of All Men (1930)
Wild Company (1930)
Soldiers and Women (1930)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.