Hide and Shriek

The film is well-acted and directed, but the story is dull and contrived and reminded me of nothing so much as an old SCOOBY-DOO cartoon. This was the last Hal Roach OUR GANG short, made while Spanky was off doing some feature film, if I'm not mistaken, and his absence makes the story feel even limper.

Hide and Shriek was the last of 169 Our Gang shorts produced by the legendary Hal Roach. Roach always maintained he had solid financial reasons for bailing out of short subject production but I think it ran a little deeper than the advent of the double feature squeezing them out--- he could have maintained the distribution deal with MGM (and thus the powerful Lowes theater chain) so it's hard to swallow that the format was facing imminent doom. In fact, all the major studios' shorts departments flourished through the early-mid 1950's (MGM itself maintained the hypo-nasal Pete Smith specialties, the Crime Does Not Pay series and the splashy Technicolor travelogs until well after WW2). But Hal sold what he could and ended the others and went off to make several highly successful feature films. Roach enjoyed tremendous success with several Laurel & Hardy features, the Topper franchise, 1-Million Years' B.C. (rumored to be one of the biggest grossers of 1940!) and the prestigious Of Mice and Men. Ironically the singular feature failure was General Spanky (1936), which largely can be blamed on a terrible concept of placing the kids in Civil War (!). The last 3 Hal Roach Our Gangs did not feature Spanky--- he was on loan to RKO for Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus (1938), but would rejoin the entire cast over at MGM with Aladdin's Lantern (released 9/17/38). MGM's inability to properly handle comedies is legendary and the Our Gang debacle is one of the best examples of what not to do with a successful formula. Roach knew how to entertain an audience and even the weakest of his shorts show his studio cared about the product. For all of it's production values, MGM treated Our Gang like a farm animal through 52 more entries. Sadly, these are the ones most often seen. After decades of classic shorts from Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chase, Laurel & Hardy and Chester Conklin, Our Gang's Hide and Shriek was the very last short Hal Roach would ever produce--- worth seeing for that fact alone.

This Hal Roach comedy short, Hide and Shriek, is the one hundred sixty-ninth entry in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the eighty-first talkie. It's also the very last one in the series produced by Hal Roach Studios as distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would take over production with the next one. Alfalfa is running a detective agency with Porky and Buckwheat as his assistants. Darla is their client who's looking for her missing candy. Percy and Junior are the suspects and are being followed. Unfortunately, Alf, Bucky, and Pork end up in a haunted sideshow at an amusement park...This was quite a funny entry to end Hal Roach's run as the producer of the Our Gang series at his studio. It would also be the last time LeRoy Shield's theme of "Good Old Days" would begin and end an ep of the series, not to mention any of his or Marvin Hatley's scores used as background. Also, no more "Oelze gag", named after longtime Roach staffer Charley Oelze who'd continue at the studio until his retirement. So on that note, Hide and Shriek was a nice way for Our Gang to say goodbye to all those left behind I just mentioned.

As for why things happened the way they did. Well, by this time double features were crowding out short subjects in theatres not owned by major studios and two years previous, Hal Roach had graduated Laurel & Hardy to features, let go of Charley Chase who went to Columbia to continue starring in shorts as well as direct the studio's other stars of such like The Three Stooges, and had failed to graduate Our Gang to features when General Spanky tanked and reduced the series shorts to just one-reel to cut costs. M-G-M had wanted these shorts to continue past this period but Roach felt they weren't doing enough publicity for the features he made for them like his hit Topper. Actually, Metro may have had a reason for doing what they did: they weren't thrilled by the possibility of Roach making a deal with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's son Vittorio for co-productions between his country and America. It didn't go through but it may have contributed to Hal abruptly severing ties with the studio-He had one more year of commitment of Our Gang for them and had one more Laurel & Hardy feature, Block-Heads, ready for release by them-to making a more lucrative deal with United Artists. With that, he sold the Our Gang series-including name, players, and some of the writing crew, as well as director Gordon Douglas' services for at least two films-to his now-former distributor. It took awhile, but the loss would be felt as the years went on...

1929 "Moan and Groan, Inc." Thanks to Edgar Kennedy and Max Davidson 1930 "Pups is Pups" The quintessential of all Little Rascals flicks. 1931 "Little Daddy" Farina knows how to cry without stirring the audiences to sob or self- pity. Compare that with "Dogs is Dogs", "Fly My Kite", and "Big Ears". 1932 "Free Wheelin' " 1933 "The Kid From Borneo" 1934 "Mama's Little Pirate" Spanky, not quiet 6 years old, makes his debut as the leader to whom all the other members of the rascals' troupe rally around. 1935 "Beginner's Luck" Alfalfa's debut. Rascals at their best, making shamble of the schemes of pretentious adults. 1936 "Divot Diggers" McGowan returns to produce one of his best Rascals short. One Reelers 1936 "Two Too Young" 1937 "Rushin' Ballet" Rascals again show they are at their best in shambling adult snobbishness and pretentiousness. 1938 "Hide and Shriek". Kids too bratty and obnoxious in "Feed 'em and Weep"; much too much mushiness in "Then Came the Brawn", and "Three Men in a Tub"; "Bear Facts" An adult prank at kids' expense.

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

‘Eegle Eye Detektive' Alfalfa, with assistants Buckwheat & Porky, are hunting Darla's missing box of candy. But when they end up in the Haunted House on the Amusement Pier at Long Beach, they soon find themselves playing HIDE AND SHRIEK with the resident monsters.

A funny little film, with Alfalfa's disguises especially humorous. Highlight: in the Haunted House. That's comic Billy Bletcher's voice on the recording.