The Horizontal Lieutenant (1962)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) As the tallest contract players in the MGM stable, Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton were a frequent on-screen romantic pair, appearing in four films from 1960 to 1962 (leading many to erroneously assume that they were a real-life couple). The Horizontal Lieutenant is the last of those four films, and perhaps the weakest. Set during WW2, it’s a comedy in which Hutton plays a lieutenant recovering from a concussion on a small island in the Pacific, with Prentiss as a nurse who may or may not be on her way to becoming a romantic interest. But much of the film downplays that romance in order to take a look at some slight comedic back-line drama of apprehending a Japanese thief pilfering American supplies on a liberated island. Prentiss and Hutton don’t have that much time together, and the film suffers from that deficiency, and it’s not the stereotypical portrayal of Japanese characters that makes up for it. The amiable but unmemorable comedy of the film doesn’t really help – there’s none of the bite or sexiness of their previous three films, and the very limited objectives of the film don’t do much to help elevate the rest. But The Horizontal Lieutenant is significantly better when Prentiss and Hutton are on-screen together, so at least there’s that. But don’t start with this one if you want to see what made MGM pair up those two so often, or why people liked them as a couple so much.