MOVIE OF THE DAY: "SOAK THE RICH" (1936)

Humphrey Craig finds himself under attack on three fronts. As a multi-millionaire in the Depression, he's known as "the most hated man in America." He's upset over a new super tax on the wealthy. And, worse, his daughter Belinda has fallen in with a group of Communists at the college he founded. What's a plutocrat to do?

Inspired by Pres. Roosevelt's Revenue Act of 1935, which taxed up to 75% of the wealthy's income, along with the insurgent American Communist Party, Soak the Rich tackles politics in a way few comedies of its time did, lampooning both the left and the right, finding little if anything positive to say about either.

Humphrey Craig, freely admitting to wallowing in "my orgy of self-pity," bemoans FDR being "blind to the wounds of the millionaire." Almost killed by a bomb mailed from The Society for the Abolition of Monstrosities, he sighs, "There's only one safe place for a capitalist -- Russia!"

I couldn't get rid of the parasitic watermarks plastered
over this lobby card by the craven capitalists at
Almay Stock Photos.

The campus Commie, Kenneth "Buzz" Jones, isn't much more intellectually aware, his speech to fellow Reds being little more than a fast-talking pep rally peppered with clichés, as he protests the suspension of a leftwing economics professor. "They don't want any intellectuals in this university," he bellows. "All they want is capitalistic tango dancers, and capitalistic ukulele players!" Then really revving up the crowd, Buzz gives them a much-needed heads-up:

Do you know what the world's going to say to what we're going to do? The world's going to say, One: we're nuts. Two: That we're a bunch of long-haired radicals. So I say, the first thing we do is everybody gets their heads shaved. That'll dispose of the second charge.

A gun and a fireplace shovel are no match for an
angry Commie.

Humphrey Craig's daughter Belinda gets caught up in the movement, swearing to Buzz, "I want to be a radical, too!" as if joining a sorority. But Buzz, feeling their mutual attraction, wants no part of it, fearing that a relationship would doom his dream of building a utopian paradise. "What about the Russians," Belinda asks, "don't they kiss?" "Not while they're working," he replies sternly. 

You can see where Soak the Rich is going by the end of the second reel -- Red Meets Girl, Red Falls In Love -- but that's the way romantic comedies work. Still, while there's nothing inherently wrong with Soak the Rich, there's something slightly off. 

For while its dialogue is sophisticated and, at times, laugh-out loud funny, its pace is often sluggish. Occasionally, there are pauses as if allowing for audience laughter. And while the male leads Walter Connelly (Humphrey Craig) and John Howard (Buzz Jones) are quite funny, Mary Taylor plays Belinda as if in a Xanax-induced haze which has also given her a faux-British accent. A model by trade, Taylor understandably has only four movies to her resume. 

Muglia appears to prefer Belinda in a
Bazooka Joe outfit.

A brief subplot with Belinda's kidnapping by a nihilist named Muglia -- the sole member of the aforementioned Society for the Abolition of Monstrosities -- goes nowhere, apparently being nothing more than an excuse for the script to provide more political jokes. And when spoken by frog-voiced Lionel Stander, they are kind of funny: "I can put Stalin in one pocket, Lenin and the other, and still have room for Karl Marx. Three peanut brains -- hah!" But as amusing as it is, the scene could have been eliminated to tighten the movie's 85-minute running time.

Maybe if Paramount released Soak the Rich on Blu-Ray,

I wouldn't have to resort to taking crummy-looking
pictures of grey market prints off the internet.

As part of their carte-blanche, four picture deal with Paramount, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur -- who appear in the opening credits -- were offered the rare opportunity to write, produce and direct without any studio interference -- which, oddly, might be part of Soak the Rich's problem. These guys were first and foremost writers who didn't think they needed help with direction. A more seasoned, objective eye could have made it an even better picture.

Still, Soak the Rich's imperfections have never warranted the negative reviews garnered upon its original release, or from, say, Leonard Maltin's original movies-on-TV book, which rated it "BOMB". Like the three other Hecht & MacArthur Paramount releases, Soak the Rich has never aired on TCM, and is available only through independent DVD sellers. Heck, most of them can even be watched for free on YouTube and Vimeo.

Hey, that just means The People don't have fork over their hard-earned pay to The Man. Up with the movie bootleggers, down with parasitic copyrights!

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