Hide and Shriek

Several of the final shorts by Hal Roach Studios in the Our Gang series lacked Spanky, as he'd been loaned out to RKO for a full-length film. Despite his absence, a couple of these films were still quite good. However, here in "Hide and Shriek", his absence is felt as Alfalfa only has very little kids to help him with his detective agency--kids who really weren't very talented and offered little in the way of chemistry.

This is also a pretty weak film because the plot is VERY contrived. So, even when it has funny moments, the utterly stupid plot overrides everything. Alfalfa starts a detective agency and hires Porky and Buckwheat. Here's where it gets goofy--the three are accidentally deposited in a haunted house at the amusement park(!?!). There, they run about thinking all of this is real. It's really pretty dreadful and it's not a big surprise that this marks the final Hal Roach Our Gang film.

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.

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.

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.

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.