Last night we had a fun Haunted House movie: "Spooks Run Wild"(1941) starring The East Side Kids and Bela Lugosi. The Kids, led by Leo Gorcey (who reminds me of a street-level Frankie Darro) are being sent to a summer camp/reform school as the movie opens, as part of a juvenile delinquent rehabilitation program. The camp is run by "Jeff Dixon" (Dave O'Brien of 60 minute Western fame) and is designed to give troubled kids discipline while also exposing them to the psychologically beneficial properties of nature. Dixon's had a few run-ins with the kids before, but is hopeful that the new approach will turn them to the straight and narrow. They start goofing off the moment they get there, however; Gorcey tries to pick up a waitress at the local cafe as the rest of the kids trade wisecracks, including "Scruno" (Sunshine Sammy Morrison), the colored member of the group. Sunshine Sammy is essentially filling the Mantan Moreland role here, bug-eyed and dubious of Gorcey's schemes. This difference is that he's only 19, but he's very funny as are all the East Siders, including Bobby Jordan and Huntz Hall, who Rick Nielsen got his look from.
While the boys are wisecracking the waitress, a report comes over the cafe radio about a "monster" on the loose, a serial killer who may be headed in their direction. We cut to a gas station at the foot of the hill, where "Mr. Nardo" (Bela Lugosi) and his sidekick "Luigi" (oft-seen little person actor Angelo Rossitto) are asking directions to the Billings House, an old, creepy mansion that's been abandoned for ten years. Nardo and Luigi drive up there with their trailer of coffins in tow, and set up shop, though we never find out if they are squatting or have inherited it from the lady who lived there.
After leaving the cafe, the kids decide to hike a trail instead of returning to the detention camp. In the woods, "Peewee" (David Gorcey, Leo's brother) trips and falls after the kids are shot at by a country bumpkin who correctly assumes they are escapees from the camp. The locals are scared - and arming themselves - because of the Monster Killer on the loose, so Peewee is now shoulder-shot, and the kids have to find him a doctor. Knowing nothing about Billings House or its new occupants, they take him there because it's nearby. Maybe they can use the phone to call a doctor. Bela answers the door and Bids Them Velcome (naturally). "I can help your friend," he says, so the boys bring Peewee in, and after that, Haunted House hijinx ensue, some of the best in the subgenre, with Sunshine Sammy getting a lion's share of funny moments after he's tasked, by Leo Gorcey, with watching over Peewee while Peewee recovers from his gunshot wound. To that end, he's been hyp-no-tized! by Mr. Nardo but gets out of bed in a trance and starts wandering the house, going through trap doors and false walls. Scruno has to follow Peewee so he won't lose track of him, but he keeps running into Nardo and Luigi in dark, cobwebby corners, and by now all the boys are certain Nardo is the Monster Killer.
Back at the gas station, another man, one "Dr. von Grosch" (Dennis Moore) is now asking directions to the Billings House. He's got a Van Dyke beard and the requisite cane, looking every bit the vampire hunter. On his way up the hill, he meets the detention camp nurse (Dorothy Short), who is wondering what's happened to the boys, as has camp leader Jeff Dixon and everyone else in the small mountain town. Dixon organises a search party, armed with rifles and torches, and the nurse is on the way to the house with the vampire hunter, who tells her "do exactly as I say when we get there".
Meanwhile, Sunshine Sammy Morrison is scared out of his wits, having to fend off Nardo and Luigi by himself. But then he gets an idea to fight fire with fire, and when he finds the rest of the gang, they rig up a "floating" skeleton to scare Nardo to death and give him a taste of his own medicine. And it works, because.......Mr. Nardo is only human. He's not a vampire, and he's not the Monster Killer after all.
So who is, then?
I once didn't care for comedy/horror mash-ups from the 1940s - "Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein" and the like. But, having finally seen that film and a few others over the last couple of years, I've changed my mind. They aren't supposed to be scary, but fun - "spooky" is the key word - and "Spooks Run Wild" is one of the best of the bunch, with it's decked-out haunted mansion and the wise-guy attitudes of The East Side Kids, who were also known as The Bowery Boys in other movies. I would love to see a Criterion restoration of this film and I think it deserves it, which is why I'm giving it a ratings boost, one rung higher than usual, Two Huge Thumbs Up. It ain't Citizen Kane, or even Frankenstein, but it's a blast and you're gonna love it. Highly recommended, the picture is very good. ////
We weren't quite as lucky the previous night with "The Shadow Laughs"(1933), a crime film I selected because I saw Caesar Romero in the cast. Because he played The Joker (Romero was the original and by far the best Joker, imo), and because that character was based on Conrad Veidt's character in Paul Leni's "The Man Who Laughs", I guess I got it all cross-associated and thought Romero was gonna star as a cut-faced crime creep in this one, but that's not what the film was at all. Instead, it was one of those early-30s "wise-cracking reporter flicks", where said Wise Guy hangs around the desk of a Sweet Young Thing secretary to impress her with his Citified Gumshoe Worldweariness, cracking endless one-liners until his editor finally kicks him to the street.
The plot: a bank manager gets murdalized at the beginning of the movie, while robbers are absconding with a hundred thousand gees. In their getaway taxi, one robber complains to the other: "I didn't know you was gonna kill anybody! Now instead of riskin' a ten-to-twenty stretch, I'm looking at The Chair if we're caught!" He ain't happy about the way it all went down, but that's his tough luck, because: KA-POW!
Now he's dead. His buddy just shot him in the taxi. That's what he gets for complaining.
Enter "Robin Dale" (Hal Skelly), the hot-shot reporter. He's on the case, so he heads to the bank, hoodwinks the security guard and walks straight to the desk of cutie-pie clerk "Ruth Hackett" (Rose Hobart), who is typing up a list of the stolen loot serial numbers. After schweet-talking her, Dale asks Ruth for a peek at said list, and she allows it. Then he's off (after a few more one liners), to investigate the bank robbery/murder. The movie bogs down here, despite the loveliness of Hobart, because the screenwriter doesn't know when to cut the repartee. The second fifteen minutes drags due to this flaw. However, at the 30 minute mark, the plot picks up as the cops get involved and put the schqueeze on a Trump-like racketeer, who's always one step ahead of the law (and whatever happened to the Mar-a-Lago document hearings?). Ruth Hackett's brother is involved with this man, and Dale the reporter tries to extricate him for Ruth's sake. As for Caesar Romero, he finally shows up toward the end, looking lean and mean in a slim fitting suit, a Trim Mustachio adorning his Latin-handsome face. He looks like he could kill you by thinking about it, but - as this was his debut - he doesn't get to do that nor much else.
The reason to watch this movie is Rose Hobart, and she's more than a good enough reason, despite the well-deserved 4.3 rating on IMDB. Still, there's Rose, who's onscreen throughout, looking sharp in a modern hairdo and clinging dress. She doesn't get to say much because Hal Skelly never stops jabbering, but she looks nice in an extended couch scene, where the director poses her sitting this way and that. And she's also a good natural actress (who got blacklisted later in the HUAC hearings.)
I feel bad picking on Skelly, who - I now see in reading his bio - was killed in a collision with a train not long after "The Shadow Laughs" was completed. He was driving around looking for his dog at the time, so that makes him a hero in my book, and in yours, too. He was a vaudeville performer, which may explain his hamminess in this role, though his performance does get serious toward the end.
Most reviewers wouldn't recommend this flick, but I do, because it means well. It picks up in the second half, and has Rose Hobart and a few minutes of Caesar Romero, so watch it for them and for poor Hal Skelly and forget about the crummy screenwriting and direction. You've gotta have heart in this world, so let's give it Two Big Thumbs Up and a mild recommendation. There's a three minute exposition scene at the end that explains the entire plot, so you don't have to pay attention, and the picture is very good. ////
And that's all I know. My blogging music tonight is "Deadwing" by Porcupine Tree, and my late night is "Tannhauser" by Wagner. Did you check out "Wozzeck" by Berg? You did? Cool! I knew you'd like it. I hope your week is off to a good start and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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