Search - Behave Yourself on DVD

Content Advisory: Questionable for Children Movie Release: 1951 DVD Release: 03/23/2004 Format: DVD - Black and White SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 20 mins Studio: Alpha Video Members Wishing: 0 Genres: Comedy, Black Comedy

One of the oddest comedies of the 1950s, Behave Yourself! stars Farley Granger and Shelley Winters as a pair of none-too-bright newlyweds. Granger and Winters adopt a stray pooch named Archie, who unbeknownst to them has been trained as a go-between for a couple of underworld gangs. To the ever-mounting amazement of our hero and heroine, corpses begin to pile up all around them as one gang endeavors to rub out the other during a million-dollar smuggling operation. While it's quite possible to treat murder as a farcical situation-remember Arsenic and Old Lace?--the killings in this film are sometimes too graphic to induce laughter (there's nothing terribly mirth-provoking about gang flunkey Hans Conried lying dead in a bathtub with a bullet hole between his eyes). Another detriment is the casting of Granger and Winters, both of whom are woefully unsuited to their roles. In fact, such veteran villains as Lon Chaney Jr., Sheldon Leonard, Francis L. Sullivan and Elisha Cook Jr. come off funnier than the stars! The film's best sequence occurs during the closing cast credits, so try to stick around after the "THE END" title. Behave Yourself was the first coproduction between Wald-Krasna Productions and RKO Radio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Farley Granger - Bill Denny
Shelley Winters - Kate Denny
William Demarest - O'Ryan
Francis L. Sullivan - Fat Fred
Margalo Gillmore - Mrs. Carter

George Beck's Behave Yourself! was originally distributed by RKO, but evidently fell out of copyright somewhere in its history, and ended up coming to DVD from Alpha Video. The Jerry Wald/Norman Krasna production, which sort of tries to be another Bringing Up Baby, looks very good, transferred from a clean, reasonably sharp and crisp print, with good sound and no notable flaws of any kind in the transfer. Alpha's typical six chapters aren't really adequate to break down a movie like this, with a fairly involved and episodic plot, but otherwise there aren't any deficiencies in the disc, and the budget price is certainly right. The film itself marked a low point for stars Farley Granger and Shelley Winters, although modern audiences who only remember her from movies like The Poseidon Adventure might find it revelatory to see Winters in her early career, when she was a sex symbol and popular pinup. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide