Alice im Spukhaus

I hadn't seen much of the Alice shorts but decided to check some out on YouTube. This was the first one, with the premise that Alice, hanging out with a second-rung Little Rascals group, sees that one of the boys throws a baseball through a window to a spooky house. None of them want to go in, so Alice volunteers. She goes inside, falls asleep (or does she's hit on her head, it's one of those), and then is witness once again to the world of cartoon creatures. She helps one of them, a cat, and then has to fight off some of the ghosts who chase the cat and then her. And it ends with her... getting arrested somehow (!) How cruel!

This is crude stuff, and has its charms every now and then - the ghosts at one point play, no kidding, Mah-Jong at a table - but the animation is repetitive (you can tell the ghosts and certain cat movements are done over and over, probably to save on extra animated drawings), and there's an odd racist beat at the start. Or maybe it isn't racist, but... what is one to make today of the fat white kid talking about "Spooks" in the house and then pointing for the little black kid next to him to go in (he shouts "Spooks!" and then runs away).

Is he calling the kid this word? Or is it just about the kid going in there to face off against them? Why not ghosts? It's one of those things, I guess, one should note is of the period, and maybe could be questioned if one is watching it carefully. But it's hard to shake off, and is the kind of thing that makes me not want to watch this too soon - this despite the fact that the pace is good and sharp, the ending is strangely dark, and the drawing of the cat and the ghost caricatures are fun.