Featuring some hilarious political incorrectness, Night World is an excellent glimpse at pre-code Hollywood pushing the envelope. With a running time of under an hour it covers a lot of edgy vice and mawkish romance that only offers respite from this orgy of cynicism.
Things are pretty lurid at Happy's (Boris Karloff) a prohibition nightclub featuring hard boiled dancers and mobbed up staff. Customers tend to over imbibe and make fools of themselves around the hoofers while wives seek out affairs and other patrons drown their sorrows in booze. One desolate fellow (Lew Ayres) hooks up with a sympathetic dancer (Mae Clarke) in the film's only situation where decency may prevail but even that hangs in the balance as they are threatened by a predatory gangster (George Raft) and witness the murder of Happy and his cheating wife.
Director Herbert Henley covers a lot of exposition early with a fast moving montage of Night Life in the big city followed up by the overview and wisdom of the doorman (Clarence Muse) who sums up the scene with his own well tempered theory. Once inside the club the pace takes on a rat a tat tat style as Henley jumps from character to character with comedic and ominous overtones while Busby Berkley fleshes things out in some kaleidoscopic dance numbers.
Ayres is a self pitying annoyance most of the way, Clarke decent in other scenes such as with Raft. Karloff's Happy is the most intriguing character in the film but it is Muse who has the best scene early and while hanging on the periphery throughout that gives the film its most powerful character and performance.
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