Horse Feathers

Quincy Wagstaff, the new president of Huxley College, wants to fix the institution's only problem: the football team keeps losing. His solution is to recruit two professional players from a bar, and of course he abducts the wrong two men. Directed by Norman Z. McLeod, this is among the densest verbal comedies the Marx Brothers made, and Groucho's inaugural address and the password scene became permanent. Its most famous song is Whatever It Is, I'm Against It, and it leaves no institution standing by the last line. The closing football game is a display of demolition that ignores the rules entirely. Parts of the film were lost over the years, so it circulates today in an incomplete print. Who it is for: viewers who love the Marx Brothers and thirties anarchic comedy. Who it is not for: anyone wanting plot, since this advances scene by scene.