User Reviews

There is a history of films which were so bad that they were sold on that basis. They were called "chasers" and were first used in Vaudeville. Shows were continuous and the only way to get people to get up and leave and free up a seat to be sold was to play something that no sane person would want to sit through more than once. Later when the double feature was introduced with continuous shows they were used. This is what The Emergency Case was.

It is based on the vaudeville sketch. Even more forgotten then vaudeville, was the use of sketches and dramatic scenes in the line up of singers, comics, dancers and acrobats and others. Sometimes they showcased celebrities and gave them a excuse to be exposed on stage to the public like a champion fighter or famous murderer. O.J. would have gone into vaudeville and traveled around America and a little scene would have been written for him.

So this is a vaudeville sketch or maybe even a sanitized burlesque sketch. This is what a burlesque sketch about a fake doctor and the cop's wife looks like after all of the rude and suggestive material has been taken out.

Its pretty terrible with a weak punch line not even delivered by the "comic"! The jazz at the beginning and end is pretty good and if typical of the period it was sort of a high point for pop music.

. . . usually sagacious seers of the always eponymous Warner Bros. Sometimes did a less than stellar job of warning America of her upcoming calamities, catastrophes, cataclysms and Apocalypti. THE EMERGENCY CASE is one such misfire. Clearly meant to alert our USA Homeland of the danger posed by waiting for the Pachyderm Political Party's nonexistent health care plan, this depiction of a lying, self-serving businessman misusing U. S. law enforcement for his own benefit and then endangering the reproductive rights of a young female would ring terribly true, if only it were up to the normal Warner standard. Sadly, a thin normal dude is totally miscast as the future orange-haired bloated buffoon of "Drink some bleach" and "It's all going away like a miracle before any American dies" infamy.

With lines like the above, you have an idea what this short was like. It blew by pretty quickly, and though somewhat distracted, I think I got the gist of it. A man (Hugh Cameron) impersonates his brother, a doctor, after being pulled over by a cop for speeding. Letting the driver off the hook, the cop needs a favor returned when his wife goes into labor. Lots of quick witted responses during the examination, but none of them memorable enough to make more of an impression. You might catch this like I did as a quick short just before or just after a Turner Classic film. It will hold your attention about as long as it did mine, which is to say, about ten minutes worth.