Leo McCarey directs Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Harpo Marx in this manic comedy about small European fiefdom that finds itself with an acerbic new leader and a war looming. 

War fever! Marx Brothers style. Absolutely crazed. It is hard to think how the generation who watched this, WWI in imbedded their memories and WWII beginning to formulate, felt about a spoof of war. Then again, was Hot Shots: Part Deux any more sensitive to ‘Nam vets and Middle Eastern geopolitics? You get some fantastic sketches welded on… the mirror sequence, the lemonade seller’s destruction and Rufus T Firefly’s unlikely court defence of  Chicolini. All comedy gold.

10