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The Little Rascals Volume 3

Blu ray – The ClassicFlix Restorations

ClassicFlix

1932, ’33 / 1.37:1 / 210 Min.

Starring George McFarland, Dorothy DeBorba, Dickie Moore

Written by H.W. Walker

Directed by Robert F. McGowan

The third volume in ClassicFlix’s Little Rascals series introduces the show’s most celebrated performer, George McFarland, otherwise known as Spanky. Before landing a contract with Hal Roach, the tiny Texan was already making a giant-size splash in his hometown of Dallas where he appeared on billboards hawking Wonder Bread and underwear. The following year Spanky made the leap from billboards to movie posters in the first of 88 comedies made for the Roach Studio before retiring ten years later at the wizened age of 14—which works out to approximately 137 in Rascal years.

Spanky arrived at the Roach lot just in time, Our Gang favorites like Jackie Cooper, Allen Hoskins (Farina), and Mary Ann Jackson were leaving the troupe for greener...

Ray McCarey's Passport to Destiny (1944) is part of a curious sub-sub-genre of WWII propaganda movies about assassinating Hitler. In Hitler: Dead of Alive (1942), the hit squad actually succeed in taking the dictator out, though the plot is arranged so that the result is not an Inglourious Basterds-style counter-factual.The striking thing about McCarey's entry in this tiny field is...well, it's an essentially indifferent movie entirely composed of striking things. [Deep breath.]Elsa Lanchester plays Mrs. Muggins, a cockney washerwoman who discovers's the magical glass eye her late husband brought back from India which is supposed to bestow indestructibility (he was flattened by a tram one day when he happened not to have the trinket about his person) and so she naturally enough heads off to Germany to kill the Führer, getting a job mopping floors in the Reich Chancellery, pretending to be deaf-mute to avoid exposing her lack of German.

Glenda Farrell: Actress has her ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day Scene-stealer Glenda Farrell is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 29, 2013. A reliable — and very busy — Warner Bros. contract player in the ’30s, the sharp, energetic, fast-talking blonde actress was featured in more than fifty films at the studio from 1931 to 1939. Note: This particular Glenda Farrell has nothing in common with the One Tree Hill character played by Amber Wallace in the television series. The Glenda Farrell / One Tree Hill name connection seems to have been a mere coincidence. (Photo: Glenda Farrell as Torchy Blane in Smart Blonde.) Back to Warners’ Glenda Farrell: TCM is currently showing Torchy Runs for Mayor (1939), one of the seven B movies starring Farrell as intrepid reporter Torchy Blane. Major suspense: Will Torchy win the election? She should. No city would ever go bankrupt with Torchy at the helm. Glenda Farrell...