Product Details

• Actors: Kay Johnson, Reginald Denny
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Warner)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 116 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302682533
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #227,812 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Twenties Never Roared Quite Like This--Thank Heavens!, January 14, 2001

By 

Dave Clayton "Wereaardvark" (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Madam Satan [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Cecil B. DeMille had a difficult time making the transition to sound, commencing with a series of three flops in a row at MGM--Dynamite in 1929, this film in 1930, and a remake of The Squaw Man in 1931. Afterwards he shrewdly returned to historical spectacle, his real forte, and made the hugely successful Sign of the Cross at Paramount. For Madame Satan, DeMille, trying to keep pace with current trends, went back to the bedroom dramas he had made in the early 1920s, castigating the debauched lifestyle of the upper classes while making it look lusciously appealing. In those steamy pre-Code days this might have seemed a good idea, but unfortunately, he had been away from this kind of material for far too long and appears to have lost his aptitude for it altogether, since Madame Satan has none of the fast pace, breezy humor, or racy dialogue of typical pre-Code hits like Night Nurse, Red Dust, or Platinum Blonde. Even worse, DeMille made an ill-advised venture into the musical genre with this picture--a mistake he wisely never repeated. For the first two thirds of Madame Satan the viewer has to wade through what resembles a ploddingly inept screen imitation of a second-rate bedroom farce loosely based upon Die Fledermaus, about a wealthy woman who tries to win back her philandering husband by attending a costume ball in disguise, before the movie begins to heat up with the notorious party aboard a dirigible--a sequence Leonard Maltin rightly calls an "eye-popper." But DeMille, true to form, cannot resist portentiously staging this silly bash as if it were God's warning to repent now before the Day of Judgment--read: the market crash of 1929--arrives to punish sinning America. The whole affair more resembles a palace orgy preceding the fall of Babylon than any party, however wild, that had taken place in the decade just ended--it's surprising that "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" does not appear in flashing lights over the heads of the revellers before an electrical storm intervenes to bring things back down to earth. The result is terribly ponderous if morbidly fascinating, a camp curiosity rather than an entertaining one. But there is one good reason for putting up with the film: the appearance of Lillian Roth, then at the height of her career, as the seductress Trixie. For anyone like myself who was born in the 1940s long after stars like Roth had vanished from the screen, it was always a question of whether they were genuine legends or just silver screen folklore, a question that could only be answered once studios began selling their libraries en bloc to television in the late 1950s. (Although quite a few early sound films were still in theatrical release at the beginning of the 1950s, pre-Code pictures always had to be resubmitted to the PCA for a new certificate when they were reissued, which simply eliminated productions like this one ab initio.) But Roth reveals herself as one of the memorably electric personalities of the early sound era and the moments when she shows up on screen are precious ones indeed. I should also add in conclusion that this video is part of the remarkable series of pre-Code movies called "Forbidden Hollywood" assembled by Leonard Maltin, and the picture quality, like that of most titles in the series, is excellent.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Early Talkie Experiment, December 6, 2004

By 

Cat's Meow "Rickytickytwo" (Bradenton, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Madam Satan [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I think most reviewers of this film are missing the point of this bedroom farce, namely that during the early years of the
talkie, the studios were desperate to hold onto their audiences;
plus they were all experimenting with the new media. Many stars
that one doesn't associate with the musical genre took part in the musical mania of the era, such as George Raft, John Wayne,
etc.

Plus this was the era of experimental color, the two-strip technicolor process, with added hand tinting. So one will see
some unusual to us now, pairings of stars and genres not "nor-
mally" together.

One has to also get used to the transitional phase of acting on camera to the new technology of sound, and in 1930, this was a
bare three years old!!!!!!!!!!!! Acting techniques used on the
stage were heavily borrowed from, and to us in 2004 seem a trifle odd, possibly even stilted.

Having said this, I think this plot borrowed from Johann Strauss Jr's Die Fledermaus is also of interest, it having it's
premier during the financial collapse of 1873, and both items
seem to be less than successful as a result.

But stick with this fascinating flick, you will see innovative
camera techniques in use, new techno (to 1930) featured as star-
ring centerpieces, such as a very creative ELectricity ballet a
la an Aztec priest as the centerpiece, the dirigible, and the latest in fabrics used to create some of the wildest pre-Mackie
costumes ever seen. Erte's influence is seen in them, and they
are quite daring for the era. Mesh and tulle never had it so good!!!!!!!!

The dialogue is quite snappy, and very daring for the time, and
one can readily see why the Code came down on Hollywood just a
few years later. One simply did not discuss such up-front sub-
jects in middle America! It was considered shocking to do so
back then, and films like this garnered a lot of criticism, that
soon engendered the Code, local Boards of Review, Leagues of Moral Decency, etc.

Bear with the funky to us now quirks of this film, and enjoy the
upfront discussion of mistress, heart-broken wife, and a really
jerk of a husband(what a jerk, throwing over a gorgeous wife for
a slut like Trixie!!!). The snappy dialogue is great fun, and
it's ending is also fun. Divorces were a great scandal then, and the frank repartee is a blast.

I liked this movie, and too bad it hasn't come over on DVD!

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wacko, April 30, 2004

By 

Douglas Doepke (Claremont, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Madam Satan [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Somehow this goofy movie seemed to invite a different kind of approach. So what follows is my highly subjective review of Madam Satan.

Ten minutes into this supremely unfunny sex farce and I'm ready to chuck the cassette. First, there's Roland Young who's supposed to be an amusing drunk but is more like a ten day hangover, and second, there's Reginald Denny who's spent too many nights opening refrigerator doors because his face looks completely frozen. Then up pops this really zaftig little nuimber named Lillian Roth, who's also a dead-ringer for Shirley Temple's older sister, so I ease up on the remote. But another thirty minutes of Denny and Young and not even Roth's wiggling and warbling can compensate. Then just as I go for the off-button, somebody in Hollywood mixes up the reels and out of nowhere I'm looking at long lines of happy people singing and dancing and snaking their way into this big balloon, the likes of which no one has seen in 60 years. Must be a free meal, I figure, since this is 1930 and it is the Big Depression. But no, on the inside is an x-rated version of Flash Gordon in the royal court of Ming the Merciless, except these pagans are marching around to the clatter of trash can lids banging together like it's pick-up day on Mars. It's really wild, all the girls trying to see whose outfit is the weirdest and slinkiest, and dancing around like it's the last night of a fertility rite, while all the guys are going absolutely crazy. Right then I'm wishing I was born a lot sooner, especially when the mysterious Madam Satan appears, looking like the slithery serpent from the Garden of Eden. Right away I know she's one of the director's favorites because he keeps angling his camera toward her chest area. So what do I care that this second movie has no plot, what with these lunatics in charge, who knows what'll happen next. Then, just as I'm really into all the drunken revelry, up pops Denny and Young again, and I know the Hollywood bigshots aren't as smart as people say, otherwise these two lunkheads would not be allowed to ruin another few reels. But there's Young anyway, yukking it up like he's really funny, and there's Denny still trying to get his face unstuck. And, sure enough, there's Roth, looking as cute and dimpled as ever, except this time they've stuck weird feathers in her at all angles like she's been plucked by a blind guy. But she doesn't care, because she keeps on singing her little heart out and I think I'm in love. Anyway, everyone knows that with all this sinning going on and a character like Madam Satan in charge, the wrath of God can't be far behind. And sure enough, just as they auction off the girl with six arms, down comes this bolt of lightning and there goes the balloon spinning up toward the heavens. But then God gets his bearings back, and back down goes the balloon, with all the pagans screaming and yelling and becoming instant converts. I don't want to give away the ending, except to say miracles do happen, since the outside of this balloon suddenly sprouts more parachute drops than the jump schools at 82nd Airborne. Ordinarily, I would figure I dreamed all this weird stuff, but even with an empty 12-pack my dreams are never, never this weird. I know there is a moral to this movie, which must be that sin shouldn't look like too much fun, otherwise the killjoys and fussbudgets among us will make sure movies show only good things like twin-beds, closed-mouth kissing, and dreary couples named Rock and Doris. And that will be the end of really wacko movies like this one.