IT’S A GIFT & The Dentist

(1934, Norman Z. McLeod) W.C. Fields’ Harold Bissonette silently suffers as blind man Mr. Muckle gets loose in the lightbulb bin; Baby LeRoy gets into the molasses; a noisy salesman interrupts his nap; and a crooked real estate deal quashes his California fantasy of gin and fresh-off-the-tree o.j. Plus The Dentist (1932) — the uncensored version! 

REVIEWS

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“A MASTERPIECE! Fields' definitive study in the horrors of small town family life. 
Every person and thing around causes sublime winces of irritation, from the town's horrid
disabled citizen Mr Muckle, and a passing insurance salesman looking for 'Karl LaFong', 
to a squeaking hammock and a rolling coconut. The film's string of set pieces
(three of them taken from the 1925 Ziegfeld Follies) maintains a relentless pace and tone,
making this easily the most devastating comedy of the '30s.” 
– Time Out (London)

“Ranks among Fields’s best! The plot isn't much more than a clothesline on which director Norman Z. McLeod hangs an assortment of the star's tried-and-true vaudeville routines, but they're solid gold; the high point is an extended sequence in which Fields, trying to catch a nap on his apartment building's back porch, is thwarted by everything from a delivery boy's clanking bottles to a coconut bouncing down the stairs to Baby Leroy, on the porch above, dropping an icepick through a hole in the floor.” 
– J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

“Possibly the funniest film of Fields’ career.” – Ronald J. Fields, W.C. Fields: A Life on Film

“The zenith of Fields’ beleaguered domesticity. This is the classic comedy of aggravation, 
and while the Depression is never really mentioned in these pictures, audiences languishing in the doldrums could, and can, relate.” 
– Robert Cashill, Cineaste

"Contains some of the most ambitious comic episodes in Fields's career." – Andrew Sarris

THE DENTIST: “The climax of the sequence with the lady patient's rolled-stockinged legs entwined around Fields' waist as he tried to work on her mouth -- is positively pornographic... Fields is actually frustrated because his patient's provocative gyrations are preventing him from getting at her mouth where he can inflict excruciating pain.” 
– Andrew Sarris

THE DENTIST: “A viewer familiar only with the bumbling Fields of later years may receive a slight shock when witnessing the out-and-out maliciousness of The Dentist. Here Fields is nasty and brutish, his temper short, and the impact of his conduct is enhanced by the film’s brevity… For sheer comic viciousness, it’s hard to top this performance. (The film includes a previously censored scene in which Fields yanks so hard on the tooth of Elise Cavanna that she is lifted up onto Fields’ crotch.  Their subsequent struggle, resembling a rough-and-raw dry hump, will be of interest to sadists and Freudians alike.)” 
– Dennis Perrin