Sure Cures is a 1946 short film (11 minutes) directed by David Barclay.
It is one of the "Pete Smith Specials", the long-running one-reel series of MGM shorts produced by Pete Smith. In this one Smith takes a look at traditional home remedies. A balding man tries various hair tonics and, when those don't work, stands on his head in hopes of stimulating hair growth. A man with insomnia tries reading a boring book. Finally a man with hiccups tries various arcane cures, from drinking water, to drinking lots of water, to drinking water dripped from several feet above.
Tropes:
- Baldness Angst: The bald guy is not happy about it—he can't enjoy poker night any more because all the other guys have hair—and he goes to increasingly desperate lengths to grow back some hair.
- Beef Bandage: The "steak on a black eye" cure is demonstrated and dismissed by the narrator as "pure bunkola."
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The baldness segment ends with the bald guy glaring at the camera in frustration, after standing on his head in the bathroom ends with him accidentally knocking all the hair tonic bottles off the shelf and onto him.
- Counting Sheep: The guy with insomnia doesn't count sheep, he counts babes in bikinis jumping over a fence.
- Narrator: As usual with the Pete Smith Specials, there's no dialogue, but instead Pete Smith narrating the action.
- Sleeping Single: The insomniac and his wife sleep in separate beds. Some amazingly misogynistic humor comes from this, as the man is grossed out by the sight of his wife snoring with her hair up in pins. Later he drops a cigarette butt in his wife's mouth.
- Superstition Episode: Mentions various odd superstitions, like how onions on a windowsill will prevent one from getting a cold, or standing on one's head will stimulate hair growth.
- Title Drop: In narration Pete Smith notes that "many bottles of sure cures later", the bald man is still bald.
