History Film / GabrielOverTheWhiteHouse

Newly-elected U.S. President Judson Hammond (Huston) is a political hack who's far more interested in cavorting with his mistress Pendola Molloy (Creator/KarenMorley) than in tackling the crime problem, or ending TheGreatDepression, or doing anything else to fix the terrible problems plaguing America in the early 1930s. Then one day he is injured in an auto accident and goes into a coma. When he wakes up, Hammond is a completely different person, a crusader who's got a whole slew of radical new ideas to get the nation back on its feet. Radical new ideas that mostly involve a populist dictatorship.

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''Gabriel Over the White House'' is a 1933 American [[UsefulNotes/ThePreCodeEra Pre-Code]] film starring Creator/WalterHuston, directed by Creator/GregoryLaCava, adapted from a novel by British writer Thomas F. Tweed.

Newly-elected U.S. President Judson Hammond (Huston) is a political hack who's far more interested in cavorting with his mistress Pendola Molloy (Creator/KarenMorley) than tackling the crime problem, or ending TheGreatDepression, or doing anything else to fix the terrible problems plaguing America in the early 1930s. Then one day he is injured in an auto accident and goes into a coma. When he wakes up, Hammond is a completely different person, a crusader who has a whole slew of radical new ideas to get America back on its feet. Radical new ideas that mostly involve a populist dictatorship.

One of the most unintentionally scary films ever, and likely more influential at the time than we realize...

* DayOfTheJackboot: A ''good'' thing from the movie's perspective, and some people at the time [[NightmareFuel including]] UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt, who said it "would do much to help." The fascist themes and iconography are impossible to miss by the point where Beekman, formerly the President's civilian aid, is dressed in the military uniform of the Federal Police and executing gangsters.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Bizarre or horrific as this may seen, it's not just the film which thinks a dictatorship was a good idea. Many political observers in 1933 felt the only way to end the Depression was for the President to declare emergency powers and essentially take over the government. William Randolph Hearst (as the foremost media owner then) had funded it in part because he was on-board with that idea (and also as a way to influence politics after his own unsuccessful attempts at running for office), while even UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt felt the film would "do much to help" him. There was a movement briefly to have a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_dictatorship Roosevelt dictatorship]] and FDR's Vice President John Nance Garner even backed comprehensive emergency legislation that would have given him sweeping power over the executive branch (the proposal was rejected immediately). That said, the film was still quite controversial even in its day (the fact that it was based on a novel by a retired British colonel who'd never been to America didn't exactly help its case), and the rise of fascism in Europe in the months after the film's release quickly stamped out any major American enthusiasm for a strong-armed presidency.

* AssholeVictim: The gangsters. Their rights to due process and a fair trial are blatantly violated, but considering all the evil acts they commit during the course of the film, the audience is supposed to accept this as them getting KarmicRetribution for all the times they violated other people's rights.