A Regular Fellow (1935) Review - Sausages and Loud Germans

Is this 1935 Bavarian comedy worth your Sunday afternoon? Honestly, only if you have a weirdly specific tolerance for vintage European food humor and loud German uncle energy.

Anyone hoping for high-brow cinematic art will probably want to throw their screen out the window within ten minutes. But if you want to watch a guy argue about sausage casings for 80 minutes, this is actually your jam.

The whole plot revolves around sausages. No, seriously.

There is this worker—played by Joe Stöckel with the kind of intense, sweaty energy of a man who drank three beers before every take—who decides he is the only one who can save the local sausage empire.

The wealthy owner is getting complaints because the meat tastes bad, which apparantly is a high-stakes national crisis in Bavaria. Our hero basically fast-talks his way into becoming the head of production.

It has that same chaotic, working-class hustle you see in old American comedies from the same era, like Flying Romeos, but with more lederhosen. It definitely moves much faster than other regional films from the time.

If you survived the weird, slow pacing of Der Tanzstudent, you will find this one feels like a bullet train.

There is a scene early on where they are inspecting a batch of sausages, and the camera just lingers on these links. It is almost hypnotic, but also slightly unappetizing because of the 1930s black-and-white film grain.

The lighting in the factory looks like they only had two lightbulbs and a flashlight. But there is a real charm to how cheap it all feels.

It does not have the grand scale of something like In Defense of a Nation, which was busy trying to be important. This movie just wants to make you laugh at a guy yelling about meat quality.

The dialogue is incredibly fast. My German is rusty, but the sheer speed of the Bavarian dialect here is dizzying.

At one point, the main guy does this weird little victory jig after winning an argument that goes on way too long. The camera does not cut away; it just stands there, watching him hop around. It is incredibly awkward but I could not look away. 😂

If you liked the light, silly vibe of Moscow Laughs, you might get a kick out of this. Just do not expect a masterpiece.

It is basically a 1930s sitcom episode stretched out with a few too many scenes of people sitting in wood-paneled offices. The ending feels incredibly rushed, too.

He solves the sausage crisis, gets the girl (obviously), and then the movie just... stops. But hey, at least it does not drag.