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This short demonstrates all of Harold Lloyd's irreverence, his charm and his comic ability. Unfortunately, compared to others of his films, it does downplay his physical agility and he never finds the opportunity to climb a skyscraper.

The familiar setup is Harold's determination to meet the girl of his dreams and get married, coupled with the cliche of the heiress who must live up to the conditions of a will and visit a "haunted" mansion. Count on Lloyd to make the most of every opportunity for a laugh that comes his way.

Having seen this with a modern audience, I know that people today are distressed by the portrayals of African Americans in the film. That's really too bad, because the little black kid in this film proves himself a comedian easily on a par with Lloyd himself.

I found this 25-minute Harold Lloyd short to be better and better as it went on. As with a number of silent film comedy shorts, it starts slow and finishes fantastically. This was great not just in the end from the halfway point on, filled with numerous nonsense. It reminded of many Three Stooges films in which the boys wind up in some hotel or house or castle where guys are trying to scare them off with skeleton outfits, gorillas, etc. Those are always funny, and so is this movie. Maybe it inspired some of that Stooges lunacy in the next decade.

Here, Harold - to get the girl, naturally - has to do something: in this case, visit a haunted mansion, where a few people are waiting to scare him away. Hey, that was better than trying to kill himself, which he unsuccessfully did in some humorous scenes in the first half of the movie.

Overall: good laughs.

This plot-packed and enjoyable but, ultimately, minor Harold Lloyd short gained some unexpected notoriety when the great comedian was seriously injured in an explosion during a publicity stunt for the film which cost him the loss of two fingers and necessitated the installation of prosthetics.

It starts off with frequent Lloyd co-star (and future wife) Mildred Davis inheriting an estate - on the condition that she's married and that she stays on the premises for a whole year. Soon, her greedy relatives begin to scheme how to drive her out - but, first, her lawyer determines to find her a husband opting, naturally, on Harold (once again suicidal over a failed romance). This first half provides the film with many of its best moments, as the latter section - relocating to Mississippi - mainly resorts to some crude racist humor and overly familiar ghostly 'manifestations'.

This was my third time viewing the film - the first as an extra on Image's DVD of the Silent version of THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927) and the second on TCM, as part of a Harold Lloyd marathon in anticipation of the release of this same 7-Disc collection, when I was in Hollywood late last year; actually, I liked it better this time around, hence I upped the rating from **1/2 (besides, back then, I wasn't as familiar with the star's short films as I am now)!

Harold Lloyd was always an impressive performer, funny, with a vulnerable streak mixed in with a hint of the daredevil. This movie doesn't have much in the way of stunts, but has a fairly amusing theme - suicidal boy (tries to jump in the river but gets stopped by someone asking him the time, etc., when jumps lands in a boat; tries to get run over by a car ...) marries winsome girl (the real-life Mrs Lloyd, Mildred Davis) and sets up home in a 'haunted' house spooked by family members trying to oust out the newlyweds.

Some racist gags typical of the period can be left aside, what is left is extremely funny, involving people covered in sheets wandering about, boxes which move, and things which go bump. Lloyd and Davis are both delightful and the movie speeds along at a good pace. Recommended.

People say Lloyd is not as profound as Chaplin - maybe so, but wasn't the goal of a comic to make people laugh? That was something Lloyd could do that Chaplin couldn't - and it was, after all, the name of the game.

One unfortunate thing: I think you have to accept the jokes at african-americans expense as a (bad) product of the time and laugh at the other things in this film - and there are some really great gags in it, like the sequence where Lloyd's Boy tries to kill himself.

I can't see why Lloyd doesn't get greater distribution, and its a shame he isn't as well known as Chaplin, not to mention the brilliance of Buster Keaton, virtually unknown to the present generation of movie-goers, when Charlie Chaplin is a household name, even if many people never would have seen his (apparently - have not seen yet) great features. Certainly, when comparing only shorts of the three comics, I would rank them in order of humour: Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin; and cleverness: Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin. Even the plots of the former two are more advanced and interesting than those of Chaplin.

The film begins as Harold is trying to see a lady's father so he can ask her hand in marriage. He agrees, but Harold comes back to discover that she's in love with another, so he sets out to kill himself. This is the same maudlin and uncomfortable theme running through another Lloyd short, NEVER WEAKEN, and I think it was not particularly funny (is suicide ever really a funny topic?).

A lawyer finds Lloyd in this state and instead convinces him to marry a young lady sight unseen--because she must get married and live in a house in order to fulfill the conditions in a will. Unknown to him and his bride is the fact that some other family members are determined to scare away Harold and his bride--and thus get the inheritance themselves. This leads to a few laughs, but also some uncomfortable moments--as there were just too many scenes of intensely scared black people--a crappy stereotype from the era.

Apart from this problem, the film is a decent but not great Lloyd short since it's so contrived and has some cheap laughs. He certainly did better, but it's still good for a few laughs.

This Harold Lloyd short film is very funny indeed! You cannot watch this short without laughing at something every 30 seconds!

But before I comment on this hilarious short, I disagree with the fact that this is racist. This is because F Gwynplaine MacIntyre says that the title of this movie is meant to be a racial pun: 'spooks' being a 1920s slang term for Negroes. This is, in my opinion, extremely pointless to note for this when watching this film! This is because that the film's 'spooks' are supposed to be the uncle, played by Wallace Howe, who is trying to scare the Girl, played by Milfred Davies, who has just married to the Boy, played by Lloyd. Therefore, the black servants have nothing to do with scaring them away, because they just hide behind curtains, get covered in flour after jumping in the flour, or hide in a huge pair of trousers, or caught the Uncle in disguise as a ghost!

Now I am going to discuss the film.

First of all, the casting list at the beginning of the film gives the first chuckle from the film by saying that the Girl had 'never-well,only once or twice..' and the Uncle is a 'man of sorts-we are not saying what sort'! Pretty funny... or what?

The Boy's suicide attempts are very funny too. From trying to shot himself with a water pistol, falling off a bridge over shallow water, to falling over another bridge into a boat, it's all great slapstick!

The scene in the mansion where the Boy, the Girl, and the servants run away from the 'spooks', hide behind curtains or in flour or trousers is all hilarious. I could not stop laughing at those antics!

The only criticism I have is the well appropriate score is performed in a midi format. But with a silent film to create mood without music is pretty hard. So there is nothing they could do about it when they released this onto an all-region DVD,which was were I watched it from.

Apart from that, the score for this film is fantastic. I especially enjoyed the piece of music when the Boy and Girl entered into the mansion for the first time. That was a great piece to suit the eerie mood of the place.

Also, I thought the Little Boy, played by Ernest Morrison, almost stole the show by creating the illusion of that table moving, hiding in the flour, which made him look like a ghost when he scrambled out of it, and creating that illusion with the big pair trousers really was hilarious. I was glad that Morrison went on to have a well-establsihed career until his death.

I could not agree with Spuzzum, I do wish Harold Lloyd would get more attention.While Keaton and Chaplin ruled the roost of silent comedies , Harold Lloyd is ignored like that. This is too bad, but he could do it all, prat falls, stuntwork, very subtle comedy and he was a great actor as well. Also nothings justifies this opinion any more then the 5-7 minutes of Haunted Spooks. This is because we see Lloyd as a suitor of a rich socialite competing with another suitor, and in this amazing montage, we see them ducking it out, with Lloyd easily getting the better hand of the frustrated suitor.

Overall, if I was to describe this film in three words they would be very funny indeed!

One of silent cinema's three greatest clowns, along with Chaplin and Keaton, Harold Lloyd, at his best, could make just about anything funny. Even suicide, which methinks is the best gag series in this two-reeler, "Haunted Spooks," with Lloyd's Glasses character seemingly going for a record for most successive failed attempts at self-immolation in one afternoon after, as he puts it, "I've lost another one of the only girls I ever loved." The making fun of African-American servants being afraid of ghosts somehow manages to be partially effective, too, but only after they're put on equal terms with the Caucasian characters. Additionally, this slapstick short is all the more impressive because Lloyd finished it after suffering a debilitating accident from a real bomb, mistaken for a prop, exploding in his hands during a publicity stunt.

At first, the servants business comes off as racist stereotypes--the whole wide-eyed, mouth-gaping and knee-buckling cowardice routine in unison of a bunch of black servants at the mere mention of a haunted house. There's also the supposed African-American vernacular in the intertitles, and it's unfortunate that the film's title invites a double meaning including the racial slur. The supposedly more-rational white man, however, as portrayed by Lloyd, initially declares, "I don't believe in ghosts." Yet, once he and his wife start running around as scared of spooks as the servants are, and the interjections of condescending intertitles stop of a white writer's idea of how black people talk, the routine isn't particularly offensive and rather fun. The child inadvertently donning a kind of whiteface from hiding in the flower pantry even works because it's not about race, but the supposed whiteness of ghosts. Similarly, Lloyd is able to get away with beating a servant he seems to mistake as either a spirit or someone pretending to be one because, in the next scene, he does the same thing to his wife. It also helps that one of the servants discovers the fraud.

This is not to say, of course, that the initial portrayal of African Americans, at least, is justifiable. As far as racism in old movies goes, though, this is hardly the worst offender. I've been reviewing a few of the first screen old dark house horror comedies recently, including this one, and just the other day I endured through the pain of D.W. Griffith's mis-titled "One Exciting Night" (1922), for which the humor is almost entirely based on dehumanizing racial stereotypes, to the point that the black servants were portrayed by white actors in blackface. At least, here they were portrayed by African Americans. Another old dark house entry, "The Bat" (1926), likewise has a somewhat offensive Japanese servant in that he's treated as a racial "other," but he was, at least, portrayed by a Japanese actor, as well.

As to the old dark house formula, several of the tropes are here. There's a will stipulating that the girl (I mean, the character is a teenager) and her husband must live in the house to collect the inheritance, and there's the uncle, who's next in line for the house and who, thus, disguises himself to frighten the residents out. And there's a storm and a bunch of characters running around scaring themselves silly. The trick of Lloyd's hair standing on end is another standout.

This is the film Lloyd was making when part of his right hand was blown off by a prop bomb that unexpectedly exploded. If you look closely you can see the prosthetic hand (or moulded glove) that replaced his own in a number of scenes. The shooting schedule was obviously unavoidably extended when the accident occurred and perhaps that goes some way to explaining why this haunted house skit is little more than mediocre. It might have seemed fresher and funnier when it was first released, but we've all seen so many farces built around people staying in a haunted house that it really isn't funny any more.

Added to that is the stereotypical depiction of black people as ignorant figures of fun. I can usually overlook the racist overtones of these characterisations because the films are simply a product of their day, reflecting the opinions and attitudes of the society in which they were made. But usually these characters play a much smaller part than they do here and aren't continuously portrayed as knock-kneed, rolling-eyed cowards. Most of Lloyd's silent film have stood the test of time well, but this is one of the few that really looks like a relic of the past…

Harold Lloyd desperately wants to get married. After being rejected for the hundredth time, he repeatedly attempts to kill himself until he runs into a lawyer whose client (Mildred Davis) has to get married in order to inherit money. The other requirement before she can get the inheritance: she and her husband have to spend a year in her uncle's mansion. The twist: it's haunted! Not really, but I wonder how far this basic plot goes back. It would be wrong of me not to mention that the film can come off as pretty racist, and that title means pretty much what you think it means. Black people, it turns out, are especially afraid of ghosts. But, hey, it was 1920, and, honestly, Lloyd and Davis are almost as scared as the black people (though their eyes don't bug out quite as much), and the second half of the film, with all the characters running around the mansion being scared by people covered in bedsheets, is hilariously madcap.

My first real meeting with Lloyd, and while it was not what I expected, he certainly had a good presence.

The plot of this movie is hardly there at all, even less than you'd expect form a silent short from this era. Most of the movie has little to do with the premise, but is rather just a number of gags. Some of them are okay, but there's few very memorable ones. There's enough of them to keep your attention through the whole film, though.

The movie works well as a quick and easy silent slapstick movie, but it's not much of a hidden gem or anything like this. The gag with the suicide attempts is fun, but predictable. The "spooks" sequence is not all that original, but actors playing the house staff does give some fun, but highly dated performances.

A short comedy film, "Haunted Spooks" stars Harold Lloyd and was co-directed and produced by Hal Roach. The first half is about Lloyd's character attempting to kill himself, not a topic which is particularly humorous. The second half is set in a haunted house with Lloyd and his future wife, Mildred Davis, and several frightened Black servants. The servants are depicted as racist stereotypes with shaking knees and wide eyes. One of the Black servants is even played by a white actor in blackface. The title of the short itself is a racial slur.

Many of the reviews excuse the racism of the short as a product of its time. One writes "When the film moves to the haunted house more laughs follow including some politically incorrect ones." Another writes "I can usually overlook the racist overtones of these characterisations because the films are simply a product of their day, reflecting the opinions and attitudes of the society in which they were made." Buster Keaton co-wrote and directed four short films the same year, including one which is considered a classic, "One Week," and not one is considered racist.

Haunted Spooks (1920)

*** (out of 4)

Harold Lloyd and his new bride move into a new house she's inherited and soon the ghosts start to show up but are the real? Here's one of the better shorts I've seen from Lloyd since there's laughs from start to finish. The various failed suicide attempts at the start are very funny but this got me remembering that all of the comedy greats of the silent era got laughs from suicide attempts. When the film moves to the haunted house more laughs follow including some politically incorrect ones.

Dang, I wish Harold Lloyd would get more attention.

While the Keatons and Chaplins of the world get heralded, Harold Lloyd is unjustifiably ignored. Which is too bad, but he could do it all, pratfalls, stuntwork, very subtle comedy and he was a great actor as well.

Watching the first 5-7 minutes of Haunted Spooks justifies my opinion. We see him as a suitor of a rich socialite competing with another suitor, and in this amazing montage, we see them duking it out, with Lloyd easily getting the better hand of the frustrated suitor.

The movie then bizarrely goes into another less interesting movie where Lloyd marries this girl who has inherited a house. The two occupants (were they servants? This was'nt clear) decide to scare them off, which leads of course to misfired results.

Lloyd tries his best in this part of this generally weak movie, but really shines in the first 1/4 of the movie, where he really is amazing.

I in the process of watching or revisiting all of Lloyd's short and feature work and the first few shorts i've watched that i had not previous seen, most notably Number, Please?, have not seemed to have the inspired genius of his features, relying more on the tired run-fall down-slapstick violence and chases of the over-rated Keystone films and Roscoe Arbuckle. They certainly had good moments but were did not offer the Harold of the features.

In Haunted Spooks though we have a film that is ingenious, hilarious and inspired.

From a wonderful introduction to Harold (he's in frame a good 30 seconds before you see him, a truly brilliant reveal) the invention never lets up. The film could easily have sustained 4 reels or more, there is so much going on.

The highlight is a hilarious sequence where Harold, left suicidal by yet another rejection, tries to find ways to do the deed. The result of one attempt involving drowning is priceless and as funny a gag as Lloyd ever produced. Another involving the typical self-absorbed nature of people as a man pauses him in another attempt to ask for a light and then the time while failing to notice the circumstances is equally riotous. It is a gloriously dark vein of comedy for Lloyd, and one he would revisit, that brings to mind Keaton - who often got great fun out of the subject, perfectly demonstrating the fine line between tragedy and comedy.

Here Lloyd does the same perfectly. To so generally happy a character as Lloyd generally portrayed (in contrast to Keaton's more dour screen persona) is ought to be a sad moment (and is one Chaplin would have milked for sentiment) but the triumph of humour over the tragedy is his genius. I know some over-serious types find the subject distasteful but that is to miss the comment which is the fine line between tragedy and comedy, a subject all the finest of the silent comedians (Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton) understood well and exploited to wonderful effect.

Thankfully the overt ugly and lazy slapstick of violence and chases is largely missing here in favour of genuine laughs and ingenious devices. Bizarrely in the haunted house section of the film there is even a moment that evokes thoughts of FW Murnau's Nosferatu despite the fact that Lloyd's film pre-dates the German masterpiece by 2 years (and it's US premiere by 9).

Mildred Davis, Harold's future wife, is as delightful as always but it is Harold's maturing in comedic styles here that marks this out as a special piece. The only vague marring of the film is a racial stereotyping of the servants in the house - an unfortunate byproduct of the time that seen through modern eyes gains a more negative aspect - but we must remember the time in which the film was made and not judge too harshly for that - in fact Lloyd gives the moment of triumphant discovery to the butler, ably demonstrating his generosity in not always taking centre-stage (in fact Lloyd is missing from probably a quarter of the film entirely).

It is also interesting to note that the accident with a prop bomb which claimed index finger and thumb from his right hand and nearly killed him happened during production of Haunted Spooks, halting production for some months, and the prosthetic glove by wore to disguise this is first evident here. Indeed there are scenes clearly showing his real hand and others with the much lighter in colour prosthetic.

A must see for anyone who not only wants a good laugh but wants to see the mastery of Lloyd at his best in his shorts.

What's even more amazing watching Harold Lloyd's antics is the knowing the comedian was involved in what could have been a career ending accident a few months earlier. While in production for his movie "Haunted Spooks," Lloyd was posing for promotional photos using a bomb as a prop. He lit the prop, which turned out to be a potent bomb that was long thought to have been discarded by studio workers because of its explosiveness. But somehow it was mixed in with other normal, non-lethal bomb props. When it exploded in Lloyd's hand, the bomb sheared off two of his fingers as well as part of his face, sending him to the hospital for a 16-day stay.

"I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again," Lloyd said years later. "I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive.' I still think so."

With perseverance and a four-month physical rehabilitation, along with a prosthesis glove over the artificial fingers to hide the injury, Lloyd finished "Haunted Spooks," released in March 1920.

The injury didn't stop the comedian from performing his own stunts for his upcoming films, which was especially difficult since he was right handed and the lost fingers were on his right hand. But not once did he complain. And the handicap doesn't show through his post-accident movies, even with him hanging by his fingertips onto the ledge in "High And Dizzy."

Harold loses the love of his life and wants to end it all.His all suicide attempts are failures.But he ends up marrying a pretty girl and ends up with her in a mansion that is spooked by a wicked uncle who wants to scare the young people away so he can have the place for himself.Alfred J. Goulding and Hal Roach are the directors of Haunted Spooks (1920).It's great to watch Harold Lloyd do his comedy.Mildred Davis is beautiful and brilliant as the girl.She would become Harold's real-life wife three years later.The film has lots of fun during its 25 minutes.It's awfully funny to watch Harold and Mildred in a car while those chicken and ducks peck him in the head.And comedy meets tragedy in all those suicide attempts.Lloyd sacrificed two of his fingers when a prop bomb exploded in his hand.What wouldn't Harold have done for comedy?

In this not very funny Harold Lloyd short, a young woman stands to inherit the mansion of a relative on the condition that she and her husband stay in it for one night. The problem is that she's not married, but problems like that never stay problems for long, and her lawyer finds a perfect candidate for matrimony in the guise of our boy Lloyd, whose attempts at suicide after being rejected by the girl he loves come to naught. There's a nefarious uncle, though, who wants the house for himself, and he plans to convince the couple that it's haunted and drive them out of it before the night is over.

There ensues a lot of vaudeville physical comedy in which people repeatedly back up into each other and then jump in fright and cower under pieces of furniture. The only funny scenes in the movie are those in which Lloyd is trying to kill himself; after that, he doesn't get much opportunity to flex his comic muscles. The mansion's black servants play a large role, and the way they're portrayed will make any contemporary viewer cringe, even if you can successfully remember the time period and context in which a movie like this would play. I would like to think that the title is not intended as a racial slur, but alas, I'm afraid I don't quite believe it.

There are dozens of other Harold Lloyd films to spend your time watching before you should bother with this one.

Grade: C-