Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Title: Million Dollar Legs
Year: 1932
Director: Edward F. Cline
Writers: Joseph L. Mankiewicz (!) and Henry Myers
Stars: W. C. Fields, Jack Oakie, Susan Fleming, Andy Clyde

The Story: Fields has retained the presidency of a treacherous little country called Klopstockia thanks to his arm-wrestling prowess, but now his enemies are going to take it all away. Luckily, an American brush salesman who wants to marry his daughter has a plan to save the country: win all the medals in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics!

Why It’s Great: W. C. Fields’s movies, most of which are from the early sound era, have been in terrible shape for a while, which hurts his chances of finding new audiences. Even worse, this one has never been on available an American DVD. The tagline on the poster says it all: “It’s insane — It’s joyous!” and the storyline couldn’t be crazier, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hold together, in its own odd way. There’s actually a lot of “set-up and pay-off”. Each one of the special skills that they wind up needing in the Olympics has been established beforehand in a fairly organic way, as far as anything can be said to organic is utterly absurd movie.

Three more reasons over at Cockeyed Caravan…