It's A Gift & The Bank Dick (KL Studio Classics Blu-ray Review)

Reviewed by Jason Lockard

William Claude Dukenfield started his career in entertainment on the vaudeville stage as a juggler. Soon he realized he needed more than just that so he started to add comedy to his act and he was a natural comedian.

Fields would transition from Vaudeville to silent films to talkies and radio. Now the great folks at Kino Lorber Studio Classics have given the classic comedy fans some of W.C. Fields classics now on Blu-ray. Today we are looking at two of our favorite Fields comedies. The Bank Dick and It's A Gift.

Classic Cinema Plus Rating System:
****=Don’t Miss it!
***=Worth a look.
**=An Ok way to spend an evening.
*=You haven’t missed anything.

It's A Gift (1934) Harold Bissonette (W.C. Fields) is the owner of a small-town grocery store with dreams of owning an orange grove in California. The only problem is his overlording wife Amelia (Kathleen Howard) and two spoiled children. When Bissonette's Uncle Bean passes away he sees his opportunity.  He buys an orange grove sight unseen, sells the store and loads his family in the car to see their new orchard. Unfortunately when the family arrive in California, the Bissonette's find that the orange grove is not what they expected to say the least. ****

The Bank Dick (1940) Egbert Sousé (Fields) is an unemployed man who loves to spend his days at the Black Pussy Cat Cafe. One day he finds himself a hero after unknowingly captures a bank robber. Now the town considers him a brave man and he is given a job as a bank guard. When Egbert is approached by J. Frothingham Waterbury with the opportunity to buy shares in a beef stake mining company, Egbert persuades teller Og Oggilby to lend him bank money to which he would payback asap. Seems easy enough, but the bank inspector Snoopington makes a surprise appearance. ****

The story of It's a gift was created by Charles Bogle and The Bank Dick by Mahatma Kane Jeeves. Now the interesting things about that is both of these are W.C.Fields. Now in my opinion, out of all the W.C. Fields films, these two are his greatest.

W.C. Fields was the master of the sight gag. These films keep the fun rolling and the audience chuckling with the antics of the cinema's favorite drunk. Classic film fans will want to keep an eye out for appearances of Baby LeRoy in It's A Gift and Shemp Howard in The bank Dick.

Kino Lorber have transferred both of these films to Blu-ray in 1080p in their original full frame 1.37:1 aspect ratio with DTS-HD audio 2.0. I compared these two Blu-rays to the DVD releases in our collection. These two new releases from Kino Lorber are an extreme upgrade. The picture is crisp and the audio is clear.

Now Kino Lorber always adds some cool special features on their Blu-rays. First off both discs have English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and trailers. Than for It's a gift there is a brand new audio commentary by Film Historian James L. Neibaur, Author of THE W.C. FIELDS FILMS. And The Bank Dick has a new audio commentary by Filmmaker/Historian Michael Schlesinger.

I enjoyed seeing these film on Blu-ray. Kino Lorber have released many more of the W. C. Fields films as well! You may want to see some of those releases as well! Check them out at KinoLorber.com.

If you love W.C. Fields as much as I do, I highly recommend these tremendous looking Blu-rays of the Fields Comedy classics. You can order them on Amazon. Click Here for It's A Gift and here for The Bank Dick.

Out of 4 Film Reels (4 Being the Best) KL Studio Classics' Blu-rays of The Bank Dick and It's A Gift receives...



If you would like some more about W.C. Fields you can check out the Retro Drive-In Podcast where we talk about these awesome two releases.