1955’s We’re No Angels is my new appointed winner of the weirdest and least appropriate Christmas movie I have seen.  Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov play three convicts who have escaped the prison on Devil’s Island in 1895.  While trying to figure out a way onto any boat bound for Paris, Bogey fills time by arranging to do a sham roofing job for Leo G. Carroll, who lives with his family out of the store they operate.  Bogey also reiterates may times that he intends to slash the throats of those family members, take their valuables and flee.  Ah…how sweet, and yet nobody thought to name this A Home Invasion Christmas.  How about It’s a Funny Games Christmas?

The fun begins almost immediately after the opening credits, which were scary enough, as they have photos of the three leads as the heads of nekkid cartoon angels.  The trio in person are then seen hiding from the authorities.  Overhearing an officer, Bogey learns the guard he strangled is not dead.  Bogey: “I must have lost my strength.”  Ray tries to provide consolation with “It’s the prison food. Don’t worry.  You’ll get your strength back.”  Ah, yes, so then Bogey can better kill people. HAHAHAHAHAHA

Something which baffled me is the authorities are looking for the convicts, yet there appear to be convicts freely moving about the island.  I don’t get it—are prisoners frequently let out for brief periods of time?  Was Devil’s Island an honor-system operation?

Carroll is glad to have the assistance of convicts in the store, commenting, “If there’s one thing I can say about crooks, they give you an honest day’s work.”  Given that, he has apparently used prison labor before.  Given this is an established practice on the island, there is no suspense as to whether the convicts will be apprehended.

And this isn’t a suspense film.  It is more of a drama.  It is also supposedly a comedy, though I laughed exactly zero times.  This is a dark comedy that didn’t scan to me at all like a comedy and which is too dark.  There is much business with Ray’s poisonous pet snake, and that isn’t a euphemism.  Once introduced into the plot, it will be Chekhov’s snake and we just wait for it to do what snakes do.

Bogart, Ray and Ustinov overhear various dramas unfolding in the Carroll household and they decide to intervene even though, as the title states, they’re no angels.  And so, Bogey helps employ deceptive sales techniques in the man’s store.  He also takes a legitimate interest in its incredibly messy ledgers, though he will still attempt subterfuge in balancing those when Basil Rathbone, the actual owner of the establishment, arrives at the island for his share of the profits.  Rathbone is the kind of wealthy guy who hates the lower classes and believes in berating the servants.  Ray helps daughter Gloria Talbott work out her unrequited love for John Baer, a disinterested guy who arrives with Rathbone.  In the meantime, Ustinov…um, well, I don’t know exactly what he does to directly benefit anybody, though he does get to demonstrate his ability to break any lock and open any safe.

Also in the mix is Joan Bennett as the family matriarch.  It seems to me she should be far more concerned about convicts being around and seemingly assuming control of the place, especially when her young adult daughter is around.  She does ask Bogey what crime Ray had committed, and he tells her he had been chasing a woman.  Bennett asks if that is illegal in Paris, and he replies the problem is Ray caught her.  So, he’s a rapey convict who is hanging around her daughter a great deal even after this revelation.  Oh, and he hit a guy with a poker fourteen times, killing him.  HOHOHOHOHOHO

And all this in a Christmas movie.  Bennett sings an insane holiday song of which I was previously unaware, where each verse has a different word repeated ad nauseum.  One of those is “forever…” and it would be ironic if that truly looped for infinity.  I can imagine even the twins from The Shining telling her to get on with it.  Then there’s the flowers with which our convict trio decorates the house’s garden—flowers which were stolen from the governor’s estate.  I think an interesting development would have been if the family somehow was convicted of the theft of foliage (“folitheft”?) they didn’t actually commit.  A tree will also be pilfered, after Ustinov talks smack about Carroll’s little Christmas tree: “What is that pitiful object?”  I wish Charlie Brown was there to bitch-smack him for talking like that about a poor little tree.  When the much bigger tree arrives, Carroll remarks how it has grown.

Nobody is that stupid, and it is elements like that which largely kill the comedy for me.  There is also some clever dialogue, but a hair too much so to scan as believable coming from these characters.  Consider this line of Ray’s: “If crime showed in a man’s face, there wouldn’t be any mirrors.”  Or there’s Rathbone’s discounting of Bogey’s opinion of him: “Your opinion of me has no cash value.”  Many of Ustinov’s lines were strangely off-putting to me, such as this: “It’s that delicious fat woman from yesterday.”  Please don’t tell me he’s also a cannibal.

This picture doesn’t even work as filmmaking on occasion.  There is a very odd shot which is still stuck in my craw.  From the room above the main part of the shop, the guys eavesdrop on the family.  We first see this from a shot behind the guys, who appear to be on the edge of a balcony without a railing that runs along the edge of that open area.  Then it cuts to the matching shot, and they actually have the peaked roof between them and the others down below.  In addition to the amazing disappearing roof, I am baffled by why the guys first watched from behind a span of unbroken roof before scooching forward to the only window there.  When the guys had been watching from that first position, they would have been staring at a solid surface just inches from their faces, which would have made for an interesting visual.

For that matter, there are elements of the plot which never made sense to me.  Rathbone had arrived on the island to collect a share of the profits, and he takes Carroll to task for the performance of his store.  Bogey falsely claims sales have been vastly better than they have been.  But doesn’t that mean Rathbone will expect more money from the operations, and that would be even more money they can’t afford to give him?

I hated We’re No Angels and far more than I thought possible.  As my wife sagely observed at one point: “I keep waiting for the plot to start happening.”  Myself, I was deeply irritated from almost the first frame of the picture, with its inane cherubs.  This is the first time I have seen a Christmas film which is essentially a home invasion movie, and the one of those men who is a convicted rapist is the one providing romantic advice to a young woman.  Indeed, these men are no angels, and I have a whole bunch of words in reserve for what I think they are.

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Starring Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov

Watched on blu-ray