cricket30 Review of Swing High

Swing High (1932)

There would be more than a touch of irony if a videotape turned up . . .

[7/10 · 4 March 2020]

. . . in which French Queen Marie "Let them eat cake" Antoinette were shown demonstrating the proper way to clean fish. Perhaps she might echo the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll's ALICE IN WONDERLAND by circling her kitchen table screaming to her assistants, "Off with their heads, off with their heads!!" Such behavior on Marie's part would put one in mind of the "poetic justice" reserved for History's biggest miscreants, as the loathsome French spendthrift and her entire extended family were shorn of their noggins during A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Marie's sanguine demise is not the only example of History having the proverbial "last laugh." After Final Solution Architect Adolph Eichmann's sensational kidnapping and show trial, his hung carcass was incinerated in a Dutch Oven built exclusively for him! SWING HIGH viewers will feel a similar sense of foreboding listening to "Pete Smith" narrate this brief documentary. Performing Hollywood's most infamous swan dive, Pete himself leaped--without a net!--from the roof of his retirement home Jan. 12, 1979. Do you suppose he was attempting a patented CODONA-style triple somersault during this Death Plunge?