No Noise

This Hal Roach comedy short, No Noise, is the twentieth of the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series. Mickey is in the hospital and is forced to drink Castor oil for the cure. The rest of the gang are playing football but stop when Mary stops by and tells about Mickey's condition. Then they all go to where he is and Mickey tells about all the treats...so the gang now wants to stay! I'll stop there and just say this was another hilarious short starring the gang as they cause chaos in the vicinity by running around playing football, getting shock treatment, and then get scared by the staff when they find out about their plans and other shenanigans. So on that note, I highly recommend No Noise.

This Little Rascals comedy begins with Mickey in the hospital after getting his tonsils removed. Oddly, they keep wanting to give him the cure-all of the 1920s--Castor Oil! Well, Mickey not only hates the medicine but he wants out as soon as possible because the gang has a football game in two days.

Soon, the gang arrives at the hospital to see Mickey. When Mickey talks about all the good things about being there (such as all the ice cream), the kids decide to get themselves admitted to the hospital. After a slight detour to inhale come laughing gas and chloroform(!!!), the kids are in for a treat--the hospital staff decide to scare the crap out of them and the kids run amok trying to get away from the crazy staff.

This sort of humor isn't sophisticated but it is fun. Plus, the action is practically non-stop, so if one gag falls a bit flat, another is soon to follow. Well worth seeing.

By the way, in many of his early films, Farina was billed as GIRL! Later, the allowed him to play his own gender! This must have really confused the audiences...as well as Farina!

No Noise (1923)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Entertaining Our Gang comedy has poor Mickey in the hospital being fed Castor Oil when his friends stop by the pay him a visit. As you'd expect, the kids start making all sorts of noise so the doctors decide to teach them a lesson by scaring them. This isn't the greatest comedy ever written and no one is going to mistake it for a masterpiece but at the same time there are enough good laughs here to make it worth sitting through even if you're not a fan of the series. The first part of the movie focuses in on Mickey as he tries to trick the nurses out of taking the oil but his trick backfires and he gets a mouthful. The second part of the film has the kids running around and the doctors scaring them in a variety of ways. One way is making them think they're ill and another comes by using the skeletons in the hospital. The film actually turns into a "horror-comedy" thanks to the ghosts, skulls and skeletons scaring the kids and a lot of it is funny. One of the highlights in the film is when the boys get electrocuted and Farina ends up looking like the monster from THE GOLEM. This one here runs a little bit shorter than some of the other Our Gang shorts and its pacing is also a lot faster, which is a major plus.

Mickey is in the hospital, so Our Gang joins Mary, to fetch him candy and fireworks. Too bad for the doctors!

It's another of the good examples of the series where the kids go to a location and wreak havoc: circuses, movie studios, they did them all, and they all seemed to conclude with the adult professionals trying to teach the kids how to behave and failing utterly. Busy adults always seemed to have enough time to teach kids a cruel lesson in these shorts, and always regret the effort. Also, castor oil seemed to be the unpleasant cure-all for kids' complaints. I have no idea why., even if medical sites insist it is a good laxative. My position is that the castor bean contains ricin, which is a terrible poison, and claims that extracting the oil destroys the ricin is a lot of hooey.

"No Noise" is an interesting early silent Our Gang comedy involving the gang visiting Mickey Daniels in the hospital and running wild in said institution. The doctors try to scare them away and.....watch the results and laugh! Although a few of the gags are elaborate for a 1920's comedy (those involving the x-ray machine in particular), the naturalness and likability of the kids make this a winner, as is the case with most of the Gang/Rascals films. Some of the PC killjoys will shudder at seeing the doctors ham it up by scaring the kids while chasing them with saws, but most viewers to have enough sense to lighten up and see this for what it is, for entertainment purposes only and let the PC crowd gag on DVD's of the nauseating Care Bears and Barney the Dinosaur.

It may be surprising that the richly comic device of the Gang on the loose in a hospital was rarely repeated in later Gang/rascals comedies that most viewers are familiar with, but the syrup and Castor oil gag with Mickey Daneils and his nurse was remade with Dickie Moore in "Free Wheeling" (itself a remake of the silent "Tire Trouble" and "One Wild Ride"-Hal Roach and Bob McGowan were really big on self-referencing) and this episode was redone in the later MGM post Little Rascals Our Gang comedy "Men in Fright," with Alfalfa reprising Mickey Daniels' role.

Like other early Gang films, it is a truly pleasant way to spend 20 minutes.