Spook to Me

Another haunted-house comedy short for Columbia Pictures, with Andy and Dudley Dickerson investigating a supposed creepy mansion, but actually headquarters for a money laundering front by a group of bank robbers. Not necessarily a scare comedy, but there are some laughs to be had, most of them courtesy of Dickerson.

Spook to Me (1945)

** (out of 4)

Andy Clyde takes a group of kids camping when they learn that a haunted house is close so naturally they go check it out and run into more than they expected. There are a couple good laughs here including a very funny gag at the start of the film when Clyde and his servant run into their first guest. The film features many of the same gags that ran throughout the old dark house genre and offers very little new ideas but it's still mildly entertaining.

As of now, none of Clyde's Columbia shorts are on DVD so you'll have to find them through collectors.

Andy Clyde takes his pack of fake Boy Scouts camping near a haunted house. When the boys report ghosts, Andy goes to look, and discovers counterfeiters.

Andy Clyde is funny because in a typical Columbia comedy short, where everything else is moving at its wonted pace, he is well out of step. He's slow to react to any situation, and that creates a humorous tension far at odds with the better remembered Three Stooges. Here, reacting to the ghosts -- men dressed in bed sheets, he is alternately oblivious, which is funny, or reacts with curiosity, instead of terror. It's why he had the second longest-running series at Columbia, after he left Sennett.