I recently watched
Just Imagine (1930), a really weird picture when you come right down to it. It's a science-fiction musical comedy set in the distant future of 1980, where food and drink is all in pill form, everyone drives personal airplanes, and people's names have been replaced by sequences of letters and numbers.
As for marriage in 1980, it's a process where male suitors can file an application to marry the woman of their choice, which the woman can either allow or refuse. If she allows more than one application, the government decides which man would make a better husband, which has a lot to do with notoriety. Furthermore, once a tribunal rules in favor of one suitor, the other one is forbidden to see her, even if he is taking the case up on appeal. This is the problem faced by our hero, named J-21 (John Garrick). His inamorata LN-18 (Maureen O'Sullivan), at her father's insistence, has allowed a wealthy and influential man to file an application to marry her. Although LN really loves J, they both know his application is doomed because he's a nobody.
Meanwhile, J and his best friend witness a public demonstration in which a goofy Swedish guy who died of a lightning strike in 1930 is brought back to life by weird scientific apparatus (which would be reused the following year in Universal's
Frankenstein). They befriend Goofy Swedish Guy, who gives himself the futuristic name Single-O and proceeds to ingest way too many booze pills.
Through a drunken indiscretion of Single-O, Rich Guy learns that J has been secretly and unlawfully meeting with LN. Despondent for his future, J wanders the streets until he learns that a famous scientist named Z-4 is looking for a volunteer to fly a new rocket he built for the first-ever trip to Mars. Knowing that this is his only chance for notoriety, J agrees to make the trip, and Best Friend decides to go with him. After they take off in the rocket (which would later be used as Dr. Zarkov's ship in
Flash Gordon), they learn that Single-O has stowed away in it.
The three of them travel to Mars, which is populated by two odd tribes that are doppelgängers of each other, one friendly and the other hostile. After a series of misadventures that are too stupid to relate, but which include a bunch of dancers climbing up on a big idol and swaying around (in footage that would be reused 6 years later in
Flash Gordon), the three return to Earth just as J's appeal is being heard. Best Friend's girlfriend has been stalling for time by trying to convince the judge that Rich Guy is the deadbeat father of her child, when J bursts in and says he's just come back from Mars. Sadly, however, he has no proof because they had to leave in a hurry, fleeing pursuit by the hostile Martian tribe. But luckily, Single-O saves the day by
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producing none other than the tribal chief himself.
As I say, a weird, weird movie. It's on YouTube if you want to see it. You probably don't, but if I'm wrong about that, enjoy a strange couple of hours.
