As wonderful as this original version is, it and all its remakes have one horrible, gaping plot hole.
WARNING: NOT-SO-HEAVENLY SPOILER BELOW...
Does it bother anyone else that in the end, Joe Pendleton is erased? I don't mean he dies and goes to Heaven like presumably every other soul in the movie's universe. I mean, because of Edward Everett Horton's foul-up (and Claude Rains's heavenly cover-up), Pendleton ends up in the body of K.O. Murdoch with no memory of his previous life as Pendleton. In fact, he is Murdoch, although he still looks like Robert Montgomery (no doubt "Quantum Leap" was inspired by this, four decades later).
Sure, he has some faint residual feelings of Pendleton's that make him hire James Gleason to be his manager, and he and Evelyn Keyes will no doubt fall in love. But the Joe Pendleton who grew up and lived his life and knew both of them before his memory was erased...PERMANENTLY CEASES TO EXIST. Pendleton is the only guy in all Creation who never gets into Heaven, thanks to of a bureaucratic mistake.
He'd have one helluva lawsuit, if only he had any memory of how badly he got ripped off.
WARNING: NOT-SO-HEAVENLY SPOILER BELOW...
Does it bother anyone else that in the end, Joe Pendleton is erased? I don't mean he dies and goes to Heaven like presumably every other soul in the movie's universe. I mean, because of Edward Everett Horton's foul-up (and Claude Rains's heavenly cover-up), Pendleton ends up in the body of K.O. Murdoch with no memory of his previous life as Pendleton. In fact, he is Murdoch, although he still looks like Robert Montgomery (no doubt "Quantum Leap" was inspired by this, four decades later).
Sure, he has some faint residual feelings of Pendleton's that make him hire James Gleason to be his manager, and he and Evelyn Keyes will no doubt fall in love. But the Joe Pendleton who grew up and lived his life and knew both of them before his memory was erased...PERMANENTLY CEASES TO EXIST. Pendleton is the only guy in all Creation who never gets into Heaven, thanks to of a bureaucratic mistake.
He'd have one helluva lawsuit, if only he had any memory of how badly he got ripped off.