Today’s Questionable Taste Theatre is extremely questionable. (Aren’t they all? Isn’t that why I named it Questionable Taste Theatre? Oh, never mind! You and your semantics!)

I first saw this movie when I was ten, and I thought it was the funniest, most romantic, most elegant movie ever. I saw it again recently. Apparently in the intervening years I had totally forgotten that it’s a story about forced therapy, mind control, enormous man-eating flowers, and vandalism.

That’s right, it’s Carefree, the 1938 Astaire-Rogers semi-musical that captured the hearts of psychiatrists everywhere!

Nutshell: Radio broadcaster Amanda is engaged to a society boy who insists she go to therapy to find out why she can’t commit to him. (Assface.) She falls in love with the psychiatrist, Dr. Fred Astaire, which serves that other guy right. Then she goes on a drug-fueled rampage through the streets, destroying all she touches! It’s like Godzilla, only with heels.

Check out the graphic design on this puppy! This is what my nightmares look like: he’s a one-man hovercraft, and she’s on fire! (Best part is the bottom right: See them do THE YAM!)

“By clicking this, you acknowledge that this is 1938 we’re talking about.”

Because seriously, this is 1938 we’re talking about. Some shit is messed up. We’ll talk it over.

So, Carefree was devised as a vehicle to reunite the hugely popular Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers team; they had split up to do some solo projects, and while each was doing well, the studio was missing the mint it made whenever they were together, so back they came!

Carefree was a departure for the pair; for one thing, it was the first of their movies in which neither one of them played an entertainer. Astaire was ecstatic to have another profession, and even more ecstatic at the idea of gently poking fun at Freudian psychiatry, which was sweeping the nation with religious-revival fury, apparently? Anyway, he was so excited about portraying a psychiatrist he invented a huge musical number about golf. (Don’t ask.)

Fun fact: Astaire was such an incredible machine of a human that when the golf ball handlers went to collect the golf balls after the day’s shoot, all 600 or so golf balls used throughout the multiple takes of the number were found clustered only a few yards apart.

So: Amanda and her horrible rich-boy fiancé Dude I Hated (Dude for short) have a spat about the fact that she won’t set a date. He suggests that her little feminine mind needs a little therapy. She agrees just to shut him up, but when she realizes that Dr. Fred Astaire is a patronizing jerkface, she storms out. He, of course, is “upset”, if by “upset” you mean “totally in love in the way only Fred Astaire can be”.

Dude is really upset that Amanda has rejected his amazing therapy idea, and keeps inviting Dr. Astaire to the country club to see what’s wrong with his girlfriend. Of course, the only thing wrong with her is Dude, which she figures out pretty fast, and that she’s in love with Dr. Astaire, which she also figures out pretty fast.

(Random note: most of this movie takes place at the country club. I guess they couldn’t afford cool sets? Anyway, if you wanted to know the design aesthetic of WASPs in 1938, uh, here it is.)

She tries to gently flirt with him by doing that dance craze, The Yam. We’re not going to talk about this song, because it is a dance called THE YAM.

Look how nice this still photo is. We’ll just keep this in our memories forever, shall we?

In an attempt to lower Amanda’s inhibitions, Dr. Astaire puts her under anesthetic. When she’s forced awake by Dude and dragged to a radio presentation, her rampage is the comedic set piece of the film. And even though the movie is completely random about what it fears from a woman with no inhibitions (Dear god, she’ll make elevator operators get the purse she’s thrown out the door! She’ll break plate glass windows and insult radio-show sponsors!), Ginger Rogers totally sells it. Apparently this was her gateway to “straight” acting roles, and you can see why. She’s a hoot.

When she comes to via a little Dr. Astaire hypnosis, she and Dude are both pretty pissed at the Doc, and swear him off together. However, by this point, Dr. Astaire realizes he’s in love with Amanda, and has to race to the country club (AGAIN) to tell her so.

Now here’s the thing. This clip has the entire scene, and it illustrates everything I love about this movie and everything that is horribly wrong with it.

Dr. Astaire tries to cut in on them, only to be told to piss off. When he realizes he can’t talk to her, he sings to her instead. (Awesome. Oh, movies, I love you.) He almost sways her, too, but suddenly the spell is broken and she and Dude flee outside, where he gets a long distance call from Dr. Astaire’s crony OtherDude, who is pretending to be a woman reporter from Hawaii. (NICE.) It’s…really random. I have no idea.

Meanwhile, Dr. Astaire runs up to Amanda and begs to talk to her. “You most certainly may not,” she says, at which point he puts out little Mickey Mouse wizard-hands and hypnotizes her. No, seriously. He hypnotizes her. Which is a damn shame, because I loooooved this dance when I was a kid. I couldn’t get enough of it. It’s so graceful and elegant and adult and romantic verging on sexy (the last thirty seconds of this number? Hoo boy), and her dress is lovely, and when I was a kid I thought it was just that she was willing to dance with him because she loved him, and he was holding out the Mickey Mouse hands because he loved her so much but was afraid to touch her. But nope! HYPNOTIZED, for when you want to say what really matters. Oh, 1938, you’re so crazy.

(And dammit, I still don’t care. This is all still less humiliating than any episode of I Love Lucy, and man, I love these guys. Look at them dancing. Amazing.)

Oh well. Enjoy the dancing! And that part where they almost kiss. And that dress. And her amazing, amazing shoes.

And then enjoy the fact that it takes Dude Fiancé SIX MINUTES to figure out that the dude in the phone box next to him trilling in falsetto is saying the same things as the lady reporter from Hawaii. Assface.

Anyway, in order to permanently free Amanda from his hypnotic suggestion, Dr. Astaire has to punch her (NICE.), but when he barges in to her wedding to do so, he can’t, because Fred Astaire, unlike many men of his day (Gene Kelly) wasn’t a total dickhead. Instead, Assface Dude Fiancé storms in and accidentally clocks her while aiming for Dr. Astaire, and that takes care of that. Dr. Astaire, sensing a sudden and violent shift in the relationship dynamics of this power couple, zooms in and declares his love, and he and Amanda walk blissfully up the aisle, Amanda sporting a huge shiner. (NICE.)

So, to conclude: I used to think The Red Shoes was the craziest vestige of my childhood, but now I dunno. Hypnosis! Random therapy comedy! Drugged women breaking plate glass for no reason!

(Who am I kidding? It’s all eclipsed by Dr. Astaire, my first childhood crush, for whom my love has endured, even though the rewatching of this movie. I love you, Fred.)