While driving after drinking is certainly nothing to laugh at, I did find it quite humorous to see the scene toward the beginning to discover that the Richard Taylor character was driving drunk. They have a minor accident, but at those speeds that would not have happened. This must have been before the Movie censorship phase began.
Ms. Pac Man is my hero.
Yippee-Ki-Yay *beep*
It does indeed seem more than a little "politically incorrect" to almost condone drunk driving as this movie does. I guess MGM thought they could let it pass because nobody gets hurt but it is a dangerous situation and I don't know of any other movies were a drunk driver doesn't cause major trouble.
shareMy impression of those times is that there was a more liberal view towards drinking and driving, along with a double standard. If someone wasn't falling down drunk and went to drive, people didn't think too much about it. I think this came from ignorance and the fact that in a lot of the country the roads were in bad enough shape, i.e. unpaved, that you couldn't go as fast and have as bad of a wreck. However, if you had a wreck and injured or killed someone while drunk, society and the law would come down hard on you. It has taken many years of education to get the public to change its view of drunk driving. The campaign seems to have picked up in the early 1980s, and only gained momentum since.
Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.