Torchy's Loud Spooker

During the early 1930s, Ray Cooke starred in a dozen Torchy comedies. The earlier ones are definitely the better ones, as many of the later installments have plots that are just too bizarre and contrived...like you'll find in "Torchy's Loud Spooker"!

When the story begins, you learn that Torchy's boss has a problem with his blood pressure and the doctor recommends he take a rest. So, he plans on taking some of his staff with him to a mansion in Florida. However, one of his clients offers the use of his place and the boss accepts. Torchy doesn't like this, as the place is the old Link Estate...the same place where Mr. Link was murdered years ago!

Now here is where it gets pretty dopey. The owner of the Link Estate has a drunken employee who promises him he'll wire the mansion for radio. However, he's so drunk that he ends up doing all sorts of things to scare Torchy and his boss and his family.

Having a plot that seems plausible is important to a film....and here this just isn't the cases. It just didn't make a lot of sense and the laughs are very forced. As a result, it's one of the worst films in the series.

Because he suffers from low blood pressure, Edmund Breese is taking a vacation. He's bringing his daughter, Marion Shockley, his office manager, Franklin Pangborn, and office boy, Ray Cooke, to an isolated mansion. Only Ray Cooke knows that the place is supposed to be haunted by a former owner who was murdered there. What none of them know is that the current owner is having the entire place, sliding panels and all, rewired for radio by a drunken engineer,

And so they are all spooked. This is the 11th of 12 sound entries in the short-subject series of comedies about an office boy. Like most of the later ones, it has a very elaborate set-up. Not really to my taste.