I think it is strange so many people seem to believe animals have souls and that there is a Heaven for them. Does that apply to everything that has lived? Will there be spiders in animal heaven? In that case, I have sent a great many to their heavenly reward. What about plants? They’re all alive at one time, even if they don’t have consciousness.
1951’s You Never Can Tell has all manner of animals that have shuffled off their mortal coil gathered around a mystical watering hole. A lion rules over this layover to their final destination, a bestial purgatory named with the portmanteau of Beastitory. This is animism taken to a weird extreme. Also, it is shown in all inverse images, which is creepy as fuck.
The lion that rules over Beastitory looks especially menacing in such imagery. He listens to the plea of the recently deceased German Shepherd named King, who wants to be sent back to Earth to solve the mystery of his own murder. You see, he had inherited millions from the deceased owner of the legendary Polly Cracker Company (motto: “Everybody wants a Polly cracker”). Now that he has been poisoned, his former owner’s secretary (Peggy Dow) is next in line for the windfall, except she is also accused of poisoning King.
The dog is granted a brief return to the terrestrial world to clear Dow’s name and finger the true killer. And he will have actual fingers to do that, as he is brought back in the form of a private investigator played by Dick Powell. Assisting him will be a former race horse, now reincarnated as his partner at the firm (Joyce Holden).
I thought it was interesting they are set-up in an office, complete with the name of Powell’s character on the window. That name is “Rex Shepherd”, because the lion-God-of-animals apparently has a sense of humor. I wondered what the other tenants in the building thought when there was suddenly, and I suspect instantaneously, a new business adjacent to their own. As we later discover, God didn’t think to put any case files in the filing cabinet.
There are many funny moments involving Powell and Holden engaging in behaviors that only made sense in their previous incarnations. Powell is constantly snacking from a bag of kibble, and I wondered what his now-human digestive system will think of that. Holden uses a feedbag as a purse, and she keeps a ready supply of hay in it for snacking—and here I thought Powell had some interesting gastrointestinal phenomena to look forward to. Just wait until Holden’s stomach ties to process that kind of fiber.
She also always wearing a hat with wings in it in a way that makes it appear she has horse ears protruding through the brim. Also, she can still run as fast as a horse, chasing down a city bus that is going 40 miles an hour. How is that even possible with human bones, muscles and tendons?
Lastly, the characters who were animals still have any physical infirmities they had in their previous form, such as Powell still have the bad knee he had as a canine. That strikes me as very strange, as human knees are nothing like dog knees.
An even weirder concept the film lightly touches on is that of “humanimals”, or fellow humans who were once dogs, in particular. I don’t remember this idea being formally brought up in dialogue, and only Holden can identify these people. And the generations of offspring from that humanimal are also identifiable as such.
All of this in You Never Can Tell requires the viewer to set aside their disbelief so far that it might as well be buried like a dog bone. For those who approach the movie on its own terms, this is a light, though still rather odd, comedy with shades of darkness. After all, you have somebody who murdered a dog to get their hands on a fortune. Perhaps even stranger, you have a man who was a dog before his reincarnation later express carnal desires to Dow, who used to be his master. That presents some uncomfortable issues, though I can’t blame him. I would likely also dry-hump Dow’s legs.
Dir: Lou Breslow
Starring Dick Powell, Peggy Dow, Joyce Holden
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray