Crazy People is a 1934 British comedy film directed by Leslie S. Hiscott and starring Henry Kendall, Nancy O'Neil and Kenneth Kove. It was written by Michael Barringer based on the 1924 novel Safety First by Margot Neville (pseudonym of Margot Goyder and Ann Goyder), and was made at Beaconsfield Studios as a quota quickie.
Contents
Preservation status
The British Film Institute National Archive holds no stills or ephemera, and no film or video materials.
Plot
Hippocrates Rayne is a man-about-town who depends for cash on his wealthy aunt Caroline. He loses a valuable ring she has entrusted to him, and then wins a country mansion in a dice game. After hilarious complications, he tells his aunt that the mansion is a private mental asylum, and arranges for his friends to pose as inmates. The ring is eventually recovered.
Cast
Henry Kendall as Hippo Rayne
Nancy O'Neil as Nanda Macdonald
Kenneth Kove as Birdie Nightingale
Helen Haye as Aunt Caroline
Vera Bogetti
Wally Patch
Hal Walters
Hugh E. Wright
Reception
Kine Weekly wrote: "An unpretentious picture, which nevertheless finds popular humour in the exploitation of an original idea. The story provides equal opportunities for the principal players, and they get down to their task with an enthusiasm that permits each crazy situation to score its full complement of laughs. The love interest, too, is given clear recognition and provides a pleasing pivot. An entertaining supporting proposition for the majority of theatres."
The Daily Film Renter wrote: "Well photographed, smoothly directed, and packed with bright situations, film offers divertingly inconsequential fun. ... The amount of genuinely amusing fun offered by this film effectively offsets any criticism regarding the improbabilities of the plot.
Picturegoer wrote: "Unpretentious comedy, which finds its humour in its dialogue and characterisations rather than in its action, which is inclined to drag at times."