Giants vs. Yanks

"Giants vs. Yanks" features the Gang at their absolute worst behavior! They seem more like monsters or budding sociopaths in this one!!

When the story begins, Joe is waiting for his friends to join him in playing their rivals, the Yanks. But the kids all have chores to do and Joe has to help them. Eventually, they do arrive at the field but are soon chased away by a nasty guy who owns the lot.

During this time, a young childless couple bring baby Imogen into their home to play with their new puppies...and her brother even tells the folks they can keep her if they'd like! Well, when the boys return to retrieve her, it turns out the maid is sick...and very contagious. So, the seven kids are stuck there in quarantine.

During this time in quarantine, the kids are absolute beasts and pretty much destroy the nice couple's home! At one point, Joe even finds a gun and is waving it about the room. Now you'd THINK this would be the absolute worst thing any of the kids would do, but during the ball game, three year-old Farina brandishes a straight razor and threatens Sammy when he argues one of Farina's calls as the umpire!! All in all, an amazing film to watch because the kids are far more destructive and awful than usual...and it's really fun to see them drive the couple crazy AND get theirs at the end!

This Hal Roach comedy short, Giants vs. Yanks, is the twelfth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. Unlike the other ones I just reviewed, I watched this one on an old Goodtimes VHS cassette called "Our Gang Comedy Festival II" from 1989 that I watched previously when I bought it from New Orleans in 1995. The print had alternate beginning credits from another distributor that renamed the series "Those Lovable Scallawags with Their Gangs". As the title implies there is a baseball game in the short but that ends a little too soon as the gang then goes to the home of a wealthy couple that's been taking care of Jackie's little sister. Meanwhile, a doctor there has examined the couple's own baby and, finding out she has a contagious fever, quarantines the house for a week. That's enough time for the kids to wreck havoc all over the house to the couple's long-lasting consternation. Eventually, the doctor reverses his prognosis and the angry parents arrive to take their kids home...While there's plenty of amusing gags like a baby carriage being pulled by a horse, kids breaking glass and vases (with the appropriate sound effects), and a goat running on a treadmill that pulls the bike that turns the clothes dryer around, there's also a bit much repetition in the house wrecking sequence of the parents' horrified reactions. Still, I was mostly amused by the shenanigans. Some scenes might make you cringe like Farina crying after being knocked down by a large pillow and the whole jackknife bit with the toddler and Sunshine Sammy but otherwise it's all in good fun. By the way, instead of the LeRoy Shield score that's standard for many of the "Little Rascals" talkies, what you hear is the stock music that is used for many other silent comedies that are in the public domain. So, in summary, Giant vs. Yanks doesn't live up to its title but is pretty funny nonetheless. P.S. Sunshine Sammy's father, Ernie Morrison, Sr. appears here. Update-9/20/14: I watched a more complete version on YouTube which had the original intertitles and was synchronized with the LeRoy Shield score as performed by the Beau Hunks. This version also had an additional scene of Joe catching a turkey and riding it! Oh, and Ernie Morrison uses his real name here, not "Sunshine Sammy". My rating stays.