Crazy House

"Crazy House" is a terrible short from MGM but I do recommend you see it! Yes, this is because it's in glorious two-color Technicolor AND sound--making it a rather advanced film for the day. Plus, the ending is pretty funny and does a bit to make up for how lame the rest of the film is...and it's awfully lame.

The film consists of the not particularly funny comic Benny Rubin checking himself into a sanitarium. However, this place is ridiculously over the top and about as subtle as a stripper at a Baptist barbecue! Again and again, the guy running the place (Vernon Dent) as well as the staff and patients behave as if they completely lost their minds. It's filled with lots of unfunny and insensitive jokes about the mentally ill and NONE of them are funny until the end...then it becomes violent and quit funny for about 30 measly seconds!

Hal Roach's silent shorts distributed by MGM are hard to find because they were never released to either the home market like his earlier movies, distributed by Pathe, but this one turned up in a nicely tinted copy derived from the French release.

It's a bit weak for Our Gang. Jean Darling is the poor-little rich-girl and her father has invited the gang in for a party. Since it's April Fool's Day, he's wired the house to give the guests electric shocks, is offering them food made of sponge rubber and similar gags. Only Jay Smith as a Little Lord Fauntleroy type of kid is in on the gag, and he uses it to torment the kids.

As usual, it's fun to watch the kids behave as kids, and Miss Darling is pretty good. Most engaging, though, are Mary Jane Jackson, whose wide-eyed, confused reaction to the weirdness is the only thing that makes sense,and of course, Pete the Pup (who's called "Pansy" in several of the silents, for reasons I don't understand. Pete's real name was Pal and he rose to fame playing Tige in a weird series of Buster Brown shorts for Century Films before he debuted with the Rascals in 1927. He was a regular until 1931, then retired (except for a cameo in a Bob Hope short in 1935) and lived until 1946, a fine age for the best dog in the movies.

Over all, though, it's rather crueler to the kids than I like, and far more calculated than the good ones. Even so, it's good to have.

This Hal Roach comedy short, Crazy House, is the seventy-sixth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. Jean is a rich girl who feels alone in her mansion because she's not allowed outside to play with the rest of the gang. When Joe, Farina, Wheezer, and Pete the Pup inadvertently enter her place, she's overjoyed and invites them all in. The parents and servants are away so they have the house to themselves which is rigged with booby traps since the father is celebrating April Fools' Day with a prank-filled party later that evening but it seems that party is already underway...This short was filled to the brim with many visual gags which makes it all the fun watching the kids get confused and giddy with all the contraptions that get activated. So on that note, I highly recommend Crazy House.

The Rascals find themselves invited to the house of a bored rich kid which has been tripped out with endless gags for April Fool's Day. If small boys in dresses is your thing then this is the movie for you.