What, No Men? is a weird, dusty relic

Is this worth your time?

Honestly, only if you are a completionist for 1930s curiosities. If you’re looking for a tight comedy or anything resembling a modern narrative, stay far away. It’s the kind of movie that feels like it was written on the back of a napkin during a lunch break that lasted way too long.

Phil Regan and El Brendel show up here, and they mostly just look confused. Can you blame them? The whole premise—a bill collector and a policeman getting snatched by mad scientists—is the kind of plot that sounds like a fever dream.

The pacing is just bizarre. One minute they are bickering, and the next they are in the middle of this jungle tribe nonsense. It reminds me of the pacing issues in The Woman Condemned, where things just sort of happen because the script demands it.

Wait, why is this happening?

The scientists act like they’ve never seen a man before, or at least they act like they haven't seen a man who acts like these two. It’s all very silly. There is a moment where Billy Bletcher is on screen, and he’s doing his best to make the absurdity stick, but the movie just slides right off him.

The dialogue is mostly just shouting and puns that haven't aged well. It’s not necessarily offensive, just deeply, deeply tiresome. You can almost see the actors waiting for their cues to stop talking so they can go home. 🌴

Sometimes the movie tries to be a bit adventurous, like Australia Calls, but it lacks any real sense of scale. It’s mostly just people standing in front of painted backdrops that look like they might fall over if someone sneezed too hard.

• The props look like they were gathered from a local dumpster.
• Wini Shaw is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Bless her.
• The ending comes out of nowhere, which is probably a mercy.

I found myself zoning out about halfway through. It doesn't have the grit of The Man Hunter or the weird charm of some other oddities from that era. It just exists. It’s a space-filler. A total ghost of a film.

If you watch this, do it with friends who like to mock movies. Don't go in expecting a hidden masterpiece. It’s just a dusty, weird little thing that got lost in the shuffle of history. And honestly? It probably deserves to stay lost. 🤷‍♂️