Who Killed 'Doc' Robbin?

I was utterly fascinated by this flick when I was a kid, probably in 1949 when I was 6 years old. I waited all my life to see it again and just happen to find a CD of it for one dollar at Wal-Mart. Well, let's be honest here, it's not all that great. If I were a film maker I would do a remake. A gorilla chasing kids in dark hall ways is pretty scary stuff. The one scene that stayed in my little mind, all these long years, was where all the kids were standing on the stairway holding candles. Of course that was what was used in the trailer. And as I remember the quality of the film was far, far greater than the CD that one can buy.

Okay, aside from the "I'm shocked...shocked to find a 1940's film featuring stereotypical characters!", here are a couple of notes for Roach fans who might not have stumbled across this picture.

First, it seems that all the money went into the Cinecolor process. The film has one of the dreariest casts of any 40's B programmer. George Zucco, Grant Mitchell and Virginia Grey are the only name actors in the picture. Whitford Kane, who plays Fix-it Dan, had a wonderful role the prior year in Fox's THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (as the publisher of Mrs. Muir's sea novel). The prosecutor is Wilton Graff, never a particularly humorous actor. The rest of the cast is non-entities and the kids act more like they came out of the MGM-George Sidney unit than a Hal Roach comedy.

Also curious is the musical score. The immensely talented Heinz Roemheld is credited as musical director. However, rather than creating one of his own wonderful works (including those fabulous chase cues with pizzicato violins as in FULLER BRUSH MAN or JACK AND THE BEANSTALK), he basically adapted music from TOPPER TAKES A TRIP and TOPPER RETURNS. These were terrific scores, and the TOPPER RETURNS material is particularly appropriate for this film. Of course, there is some original Roemheld music but it's basically a patchwork score.

The script is fair, the gags are contrived and not particularly funny, but the scenes with the Gorilla are genuinely scary.

As for Dis and Dat, I always winced at the moment in Africa SCREAMS where native Bill Walker turned white at the sight of the big Ape. Now I discover it was done the previous year in WHO KILLED DOC ROBIN! Fun for 48 minutes but don't mortgage the house buying a copy or print.

I don't know if there are any original 35mm Cinecolor prints out there. Most of the prints extant (including mine) are 16mm Thunderbird reduction prints. Cinecolor was a dubious process to begin with and anything other than first generation prints are usually pretty dingy.

A gang of cute kids tries to right a wrong by sneaking into a gloomy mansion to find evidence that will exonerate an adult friend.

Looks almost like the 60-minutes was thrown together. It's like the producers thought they could just have the kids react to every spooky old house cliché and that would be enough. Unfortunately it's not. Basically the kids run hither, thither, and yon without plot or characterization. And when not just running around, there's freckle-face Speck (Belding) scrunching out a barely audible scream, again, again and again. All this may save on script, but it also gets tiresome. Meanwhile, movie vets like Grey, Mitchell, and the perennially sinister Zucco, get little more than a few lines and cameo appearances.,

Frankly, I liked Hal Roach's previous Our Gang attempt, Curley (1947), better. Too bad these attempts failed, but judging from Doc Robbin, the studio was pretty much at sea in knowing what a new formula might look like. After all, it's hard, if not impossible, to replace the likes of Spanky, Alfalfa, and Stymie.

This movie has camp galore. As a child, I had no idea of the stereotypes that were used. I had no connection to the gorilla taking the black kid's clothes. None of it dawned on me that it was something racist. I loved this movie, because even as a child, the movie was awful and I loved it that it was awesomely bad. The terrible film grade, the horrible acting, the atrocious haircuts, the poor grammatical decisions, the ridiculous story line, the inane alibis, the stupor-inducing firing-chamber hunt...It made me laugh. It was 1948 when it was made, for crying out loud. Get over it that it was racist; so was America at that time, like it or not. Move forward. Enjoy it for what it is: a campy, corny kids' movie that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

I had to see this film after reading a review here by some goof ball who went on and on about Hal Roach being racist! Firstly, Hal Roach stuck black kids in his films as friends and equals to white kids, beginning with the silent days! Were some of the scenes stereotypes? Yes, but back then everyone got a good does of stereotyping -- Italians, Jews, immigrants, blacks -- everyone got their fair share and no one seemed to mind, so which era was better? Aren't we tired of people just seeing everything by race and inserting there agenda into the mix? This is a curio piece from long ago. It's actually a cute little puff piece. The other reviewer said something about two black characters being named Did & Dat, but neglected to say that there was also a white character named Fixit. Jeeze. Get off the high horse. It's a movie.

Anyway the film is funny and keeps moving and tries to some extent to be a throw back to the Our Gang series that Roach was so successful at only by 1948, it wasn't gonna happen. Plus Roach Studios were already waning and soon would get into TV production, virtually abandoning theatrical films.

But watch it for what it is -- fun for the who family and a curio.