Drunk Driving (1939) User Reviews

Crime Does NOT PAY!

[edwartell · 5/10 · 11 June 2001]

In this early example of an instructional film, we open on the stirring close-up of a police badge. Then, we hear the blare of sirens, and then we see a solemn expert who speaks to us about the dangers of drunk driving - and offers photographs to back up his word. Just as we prepare to swear off drinking for the rest of our lives, he offers this dramatic reconstruction, and it's flash-back time.

John Jones is a nice guy who works for a refrigerator firm. This is our first tip-off that he's not too bright. He's just landed a $20,000 contract, and the boss is sending him off to the east coast, to train for his upcoming management post. Elated by this news of his promotion, Jones rushes with his buddy to the bar, and drinks 3 straight bourbons. Then, wisely, he drives home, stopping only to hit the bumper of a woman when he runs a stop sign. (When he gives her his card and says insurance will pay for the damage, she says "Oh no you don't! All these people on the sidewalk saw what happened! We'll settle this right here!")

Arriving home to his elated wife and her mother, they decide to go to dinner at a place called "The Plantation," which is some miles away. He drinks one martini in celebration with his wife and mom, and drains another two in secret. (This after paying a $25 fine for the first accident.) He keeps speeding and speeding and HE'S GOING TOO FAST AND THEN...BOOOOOOOOOM!

Naturally, his wife dies...plus her mom...plus the baby in the truck he hit...plus God knows who else. It's all too much. He cracks up, crying hysterically (and quite annoyingly). Dissolve back to stern-faced expert, who delivers lecture. And then it's all over.

OK, I've had my fun. What do you really expect from an educational movie? Entertaining as an artifact, and also as one of the first works of David Miller, who later directed Kirk Douglas in Lonely Are The Brave. This movie plays under the label "One-Reel Wonder" on TCM.

Dated and melodramatic, it makes its' point nonetheless

[llltdesq · 7/10 · 30 August 2001]

This short, nominated for an Oscar, has a dated feeling to it and the melodramatic tne common to the CRime Does Not Pay series of shorts, but for all that does have a point and makes it: the operation of heavy machinery while drunk is most unwise and can prove to be very costly. This runs on Turner Classic Movies as filler between films and almost certainly airs in March as part of the 31 Days of Oscar they do annualy. Worth watching.

Vehicular Manslaughter

[boblipton · 5/10 · 18 September 2020]

Here's an unusual episode of MGM's long-running CRIME DOES NOT PAY series. It concerns Dick Purcell, a man who is about to get a major promotion..... and who gets into a drunk driving accident in which three people are killed.

Other reviewers have called it a driver's ed film, and there's something in that; certainly the images of the covered corpses are similar to the ones I've seen in films made specifically for that purpose. However, those films never contain much of a story, nor a character who weeps in front of a crucifix. It's all the more effective for that.

It improved the second time.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 23 February 2013]

John Jones (Dick Purcell) is a man who is going places with his job. After learning about about his promotion, he and a co-worker go out for some drinks. On his way home, he's cited by a cop for driving under the influence. However, this warning means little and Jones just chalks it up to being a mistake. A short time later, Jones again has a few drinks and drives--but this time it all ends in tragedy.

This is one of many episodes of the MGM series "Crime Does Not Pay". For the most part, they're very good short films with a strong anti-crime message. Occasionally, like in "Drunk Driving" they might come off as a bit heavy-handed--but it is still quite effective and well made. Plus, hopefully some folks might have seen this and actually learned from it.

UPDATE: I bought the Crime Does Not Pay DVD collection and re-watched this particular Oscar-nominated short. I actually thought it was better and more effective when I re-watched it. I originally gave this one a 6 but feel I was a bit hasty. I think an 8 is more appropriate. Sadly, however, films like this probably have done little, if anything, to curtail drunk driving, as drunk drivers are too selfish and deluded to believe it can happen to them.

And, by the way, Purcell's acting was just terrific and very effective as the boob who thought he could drink and drive.

Crime Does Not Pay

[Michael_Elliott · 15 February 2009]

Drunk Driving (1939)

**** (out of 4)

This entry in MGM's Crime Does Not Pay series earned an Academy Award nomination and also features Richard Lane who is best known for playing Inspector Farraday in the Boston Blackie series. The film centers on John Jones (Dick Purcell) a man who doesn't realize how much of an impact a few drinks can have. He ends up getting in a minor wreck but blows this off. Days later he has a few more drinks and decides to drive his wife and her mother to a restaurant but this times things don't go as well. I've said countless times that this is one of my favorite series and I think this here is one of the best that it has to offer. I've heard people call the series predictable and melodramatic and they are but their point and goal is to teach viewings against doing wrong things. It's interesting to see this film take such a strong stand again drunk driving considering a lot of Hollywood movies at the time were showing drunks in a comic fashion and there were movies that showed drunk driving for laughs. I've seen at least ten films in this series but don't recall any of them being this strong on a subject. The director does a great job during that final driving scene because he just builds up the tension because we know something bad is going to happen. Purcell would die five years after making this film at the age of 36 due to a massive heart attack he suffered after a round of golf. I haven't seen too much of his work but I thought he was very good here especially his breakdown towards the end of the film. Dix has a supporting role but turns in fine work.

Slow drivers are the main cause of highway fatalities . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 8/10 · 28 February 2020]

. . . a close viewing of DRUNKEN DRIVING proves. Pokey jerks go out of their way to find curvy two-lane roads with continuous "double-yellow" no-passing zone center lining, DRUNKEN DRIVING reveals. These sociopathic creepers then glory in driving half of the posted speed limit, hoping that they'll eventually be leading a bogus funeral procession-paced parade of 50 or 60 vehicles! These malingering miscreants do not care how many expectant moms being rushed to maternity wards, recent snake bite victims and workers with responsibilities running late are slowed to a crawl by their tardy poking along. Then, when they force someone with better things to do off a cliff or into a head-on crash attempting to pass these nefarious slowpokes, the previously inert road monopolists have the gall to act all innocent as they exit their road-hogging vehicles to gape at their dead and dying victims within the mangled wrecks! If you watch DRUNKEN DRIVING, these inhuman roadblocks are sure to make your blood boil!

Is it really true "Things go better with bourbon"?

[cricket30 · 8/10 · 1 March 2014]

That's what this 22-minute short purports to study. Dick Purcell plays Mr. Bourbon (a.k.a., appliance salesman John Jones) who gets so tight at work he ignores a customer trying to buy 25 refrigerators. He gets so sloshed before climbing behind the wheel of his car that he bashes into a lady trying to back out of her downtown parking spot. He's so smashed he doesn't even notice the damage to his own vehicle until his wife says something. John is so hammered that the rules to the game he tries to play on the highway with his wife and mother-in-law are incomprehensible. He is too stink-eyed to even see when he weaves in front of a farm produce truck. John is drunker than a skunk when they wheel his wife out of the ER operating room, so he cannot even make out how many limbs she's had amputated. He calls his (uncredited, incidentally) wife's late mom "Sherry," because to him, if you can't drink it, why say it? Mr. Purcell was the first to portray Captain America on the big screen, as the country thought that he epitomized America in the 1930s and 1940s. However, his marriage lasted just five months, and he flopped over dead of a heart attack at the age of 35. Did drinking play a role in Dick's REAL life? Did something force him to drown his Captain America alter ego in bourbon, which his character John slams down like Kool-Aide in DRUNK DRIVING. The hospital says John's blood alcohol level is 0.5%--at least six today's drunk driving standard--and the way he plays the car game in this flick, I can believe it. What's harder to understand is why the two women with him sit back, and suffer through mile after mile of close calls, as if they're on a roller coaster with rails to keep them safe. The actress who plays Ann--Jo Ann Sayers--lived to the age of 93, since she swills down a lot less bourbon on-screen than Dick Purcell.

Great 30s Americana Nostalgia

[JasonsPrivateLibraryEst2016 · 10/10 · 25 September 2022]

Its about a man who refuses to accept that he has a drinking and driving problem and attempts to avoid the consequences. Then one day he took his wife and his wife's mother to his car to drive to dinner, but he crashed into a truck. Later does he know... his wife dies and he commenced to bawl like a baby. The moral of the story is "If you drink, don't drive. If you drive, don't drink."

This short film is 10/10 because it has attractive looking people and a sexy world full of beautiful sexy cars, trees, etc... I highly recommend you to watch it if you are not a liberal and have nostalgia for the good olde days before baby boomers and silent generation destroyed America with their liberalism and counterculture. This short film is outstanding!

Some might call it "A method to his madness," while others may cite the adage . . .

[oscaralbert · 8/10 · 17 September 2020]

. . . "killing two birds with one stone," but whichever way you look at it "John Jones" comes up with a classic mode of stress relief in the finest Corrupt Corporate Communist Capitalist Tradition, which is par for the course when it comes to the Millionaire Gangster Mob's rightfully-labeled "Crime Pays" series of tips for future Game-Show-Hosts-in-Chief. When your nieces, mistresses, cabinet secretaries and personal lawyers are all releasing tell-all books about you during re-election season, the last thing you need is another expose penned by your mother-in-law. John provides a sure-fire method of eliminating this possibility. Furthermore, it would not do at all for your First, Second or Third Ladies to air your family's dirty laundry in such a sensitive season. DRUNK DRIVING also provides a handy guide for cutting your spouse down to size to preempt this sort of thing.