Boo

This nice and unusual little vintage Universal comedy short goes out of its way to throw in footage of the golden b/w horror films; "Nosferatu", "Frankenstein" and "The Cat Creeps". The clips ranging from these three films are strung along by a mockery-laced narration. There's no harm here, even if it can be lame and downright pointless, but its hard not get a cackle from some of the noteworthy scenes and rapturously smarting remarks. It only goes for about 10 minutes, so it pretty much breezes by with well-etch editing and the likable humour gladly doesn't overstay its welcome. Corny maybe, but that's just due to the times. This is definitely an interesting and enjoyable supplement, which is provided on Universal's Frankenstein DVD.

The main reason this seems so unfunny to many younger viewers is that a lot of the humor was topical, and topical humor becomes unfunny as soon as the topic is no longer "current events"--how funny will "Dubya" jokes seem by around 2084, when they'll be about as old as the jokes in "Boo!"? I'm twenty-some years younger than "Boo!", and the only reason I got most of the topical jokes is that I'm a big fan of 1930s movies thanks to having grown up when TV stations showed movies late at night instead of infomercials (yes, kids, they really used to do that!) You miss a lot of the humor in older movies if you can't time-travel between the ears.

I've just come across Boo as an extra on the DVD of Frankenstein (1931) and, due to the fact I was watching it at well past midnight, I found it as strange as it was funny. It starts off with a bearded man with a strange expression on his face emerging from a jack-in-the-box and holding up the film's title, which is a weirdly disconcerting effect, particularly as I have no idea who this man was. The narration is rather outdated, not so much because it was recorded in 1932, but because of what is said (the reference to woman automobile drivers is ever so slightly sexist), but what I don't get is, while Universal included footage from its movies 'Frankenstein' and 'The Cat Creeps', the Dracula segments actually come from F.W Murnau's 'Nosferatu'. This seems strange, because I would have thought the studio would want to publicise its own, then-recent, Dracula movie (the one with Bela Lugosi). To conclude, Boo is an oddity that you probably won't find yourself watching unless you get the Frankenstein DVD, which you ought to own anyway

"With times as tough as they are," intones the narrator, "we present our formula for the cheapest kind amusement: nightmares." We see an unkempt man in some kind of 19th century get-up—coat, vest, a black tie with an enormous bow—eating lobster, drinking milk and reading "Dracula." "We've all heard of the worm that turned," says the narrator. "But this is the bookworm that turned. Inside out." When the man has a feeling that's a "cross between delirium tremens and the seven year itch" he's ready for his nightmare.

"A good nightmare always begins with a dark cellar and a coffin," he continues. As the dream progresses, we see that it consists of footage from "Nosferatu" (1922), "Frankenstein" (1931) and "The Cat Creeps" (1930). The footage is spliced together to make Dracula and Frankenstein's monster appear to be sharing the same rooms. For comic effect some footage is repeated several times, or run backwards and then forwards again. Dracula's caretaker crawls up and down the stairs over and over: "It looks as though he's having his ups and downs. He acts like Congress and always ends up where he started. This exercise is good for water on the knee, water on the brain and other naval diseases. It is also a good way to enjoy the jitters without drinking alcohol." The narrator pities the man: "If I were in his place I'd resign—or at least quit." He describes Dracula's entrance: "So Dracula comes up close and shows us what the well-dressed ghost is wearing. He throws his silhouette on the wall, and the wall is so scared it looks as if it's plastered.

"And now the blood may spurt any minute." He adds dryly: "Gush, gush."

Dracula departs: "So he decides to go back to his coffin and sleep for a hundred years until Congress decides to do something about the Depression."

Frankenstein's Monster enters and "starts to look for trouble. There's so much trouble around these days, he shouldn't have any trouble finding it." The Monster dithers: "He can't decide which way to go. He's like a woman automobile driver."

The Monster watches Dracula (actually the costumed villain from "The Cat Creeps") steal a diamond necklace off a sleeping woman, studying the vampire's "tesh-nee-kyoo." (I had to replay that a couple times: it's a cutesy pronunciation of "technique.")

The short ends with the Monster reaching toward the heavens, where we cut back to the new footage and see the frightened dreamer sitting on a chandelier. "And the moral of this story is: you can milk a cow, but a lobster is very ticklish."

This film is a very close imitation of the specialty shorts Pete Smith was making for MGM: silent footage narrated with wisecracks. Even Smith's narrating voice—nasally, dry, sarcastically gee-whiz—is mimicked. Why does this Carl Laemmle-produced film use clips from the 1922 "Nosferatu," rather than Laemmle's own "Dracula"? Maybe because unlike Bela Lugosi, the German vampire was ugly: "There's the profile that has won first prize in all the ghost beauty contests. When Dracula was born, his mother took one look at that face and had herself arrested. A guy with a face like Dracula must be a spook, or he'd have his face lifted. And the worst of it is, this spook looks screwy—and there's nothing screwier than a screwy spook."

Hear the rim shots? "The caretaker decides that he might have been seeing things. Maybe his near beer was nearer than he thought." How about now?

However unfashionable the jokes, I laughed at some of them. And we can be grateful "Boo" preserves the only known surviving footage from "The Cat Creeps." Think your favorite movies will last forever? Boo!

Whenever someone talks about horror movies of the 30s, the words "Universal Horror" always have to appear sometime during the conversation, as the importance of the movies done by Universal Studios in that decade is simply unquestionable. While Universal Horror was technically born in the 20s, it was in 1931 when it truly became a synonym of high quality fantasy stories, as it was in that year when the two first films of the "Golden Age" were released: Tod Browning's "Dracula" and James Whale's "Frankenstein". Based on classics of Gothic literature, both films became instant hits and transformed their lead actors (Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff respectively) into legends. Due to their great success, the two films quickly entered our pop culture as the ultimate monster films. "Boo", a 1932 short comedy film produced by Universal, is an early example of this.

In "Boo", a Man (Morton Lowry) is decided to have nightmares, so following the advice of the Narrator (possibly director Albert DeMond himself), he has a heavy dinner made of lobster and milk, and reads a horror novel before going to sleep. Our hero has read Bram Stoker's "Dracula", so as soon as he falls asleep, he begins to dream the horror of his lifetime. In his dream, he sees Dracula (archive footage of Max Schreck from 1922's "Nosferatu") preying on helpless humans and sucking their blood. To our hero's horror, Frankenstein's Monster (archive footage of Boris Karloff in 1931's "Frankenstein") also appears on his dream, and the Monster is willing to prey on humans too just as the vampire Count does. However, something is not right with these monsters, as their motifs seem rather dubious, or at least that's what the Narrator tries to explain.

Written by Albert DeMond, "Boo" is nothing more than a series of clips from F.W. Murnau's silent classic, "Nosferatu", James Whale's "Frankenstein" and Rupert Julian's "The Cat Creeps", everything mixed but joined together by DeMond's tale of a poor man's nightmare. DeMond's story is merely an excuse to put the clips in funny ways, putting footage on a loop or adding wacky sounds to them. In his narration, DeMond makes fun about the congress and the economical situation of their time, as well as of horror movies in general. It's all in good fun, although certainly the jokes haven't really aged well and now may sound boring and unfunny. While this can be blamed on the fact that humor has changed, in all honestly the jokes weren't that funny to begin with, although some can still bring at least a smile.

Where the movie shines is in it's use of clips from Universal horror films, as DeMond puts them out of context and makes some funny segments by playing with them. Interestingly, DeMond used Murnau's "Nosferatu" instead of Universal's own "Dracula", mainly because Lugosi's vampire was probably too elegant and good looking for his wacky spoof, so he used Max Schreck's interpretation as it was more of a monster. Of great interest is the fact that "Boo" contains what's probably the last surviving footage of Rupert Julian's 1930 horror classic, "The Cat Creeps", a movie that has been missing for years and that it's considered lost by many historians. While out of context and done for laughs, we can see bits of that now legendary film in this little short movie.

While I wouldn't say that "Boo" is a great movie, it's an interesting oddity to fans of Universal's Golden Age of horror movies, as not only it offers the only way to see a slice of "The Cat Creeps", it also shows a different view of those classic movies and how strong was their impact in those early years. Sure, as a comedy it's pretty mediocre (even for laugh tracks standards), but like most of the horror movies done by Universal, this one has a strange charm that makes it special. Not exactly a good film, but definitely a must-see for Universal horror fans. 5/10