Dog Daze

It's Our Gang. The group owes 37 cents to Butch and they can't pay. They are caring for an injured stray dog. A policeman passes by and gives the kids a buck for saving their mascot. The goat eats the buck and they decide on a scheme to earn more money.

I don't know why there is a penguin. That seems to be a story on its own. If they have dogs, they don't need the penguin. The penguin is funny if it's waddling around with the kids. Dogs and penguin just walk at different speeds. As the last scene attests, the penguin isn't in the same shot. It's better for them to be chased by the pack of dogs.

This M-G-M comedy short, Dog Daze, is the one hundred eighty-second entry in the "Our Gang" series and the ninety-fourth talkie. The gang owes 37 cents to Butch for caring for a stray dog with two broken legs. That dog was actually a police mascot which meant the gang was now getting a $1 reward from a grateful officer. But that money gets eaten by a goat! Alf gets the idea that getting more stray dogs will result in more money for them. Well, that's not what happens...Okay, Maltin and Bann have a point when they complain about the exaggerated reactions of the kids and the contrivance of the story. And, yes, a lesson is being taught here. Still, it's not heavy-handed in the preachings and I actually laughed at many of the scenes and some of the dialogue. So on that note, Dog Daze was another amusing entry in the Our Gang series. P.S. This was the last entry directed by George Sidney. He'd go on to make features at M-G-M and Columbia like Anchors Away, the Technicolor version of Show Boat, Annie Get Your Gun, and Bye, Bye, Birdie. Many of his OG shorts were quite funny so it's a surprise when he was thus quoted: "It is very possible that doing that series conditioned me to hate all kids. At the time I was only seven years older than the oldest kid. They didn't know...neither did I." He might have been referring to Alfalfa as he was being a real troublemaker by this point. Anyway, his last film was Half a Sixpence in 1967. He'd die on May 5, 2002. And this marked the final OG appearance of Scotty Beckett. He continued to get good movie offers and also appeared on TV on the popular show "Rocky Jones, Space Ranger". Unfortunately, he also was beset by offscreen troubles of drugs, violence, and divorce culminating in his suffering a serious beating on May 8, 1968 before dying two days later. By that time, he left show business and had twice enrolled in college hoping to be a doctor. What a tragic end.

Dog Daze is regarded by most hardcore Our Gang fans as the first unmitigated disaster in what would soon become a long running train wreck of MGM series entries. The plot here centers around the gang's money making scheme of rounding up stray dogs that springs from a need to repay Butch a whopping 37-cents. Director George Sidney seems to be experimenting with exaggerated facial reactions as a substitute for a funny script. The best actor in this entry is a dollar bill eating goat. The Our Gangs that work the best have no moral lessons to force down the audiences' throats--- something that Hal Roach kept to a minimum... something that MGM would never learn. This dismal entry marks Scotty Beckett's second and last Our Gang appearance as Cousin Wilbur. Although he'd soon become a first-rate child actor, here you just want to see him get beat up. Awful!!!!! A 1 out of 10, unfortunately there would be many future MGM entries to equal this stinker.

In this Hal Roach, MGM short, the kids of Our Gang (or, the Little Rascals as they later became known), get into a brouhaha over rounding up dogs on the street and planning to collect rewards offered by owners. But before they can start collecting, a newspaper article announces that there's been a gang of crooks stealing dogs. So, when the ladies of the town get up in arms and the law gets involved, they all come down on the gang.

There's a lot of fun and action, as always, in these cute neighborhood kids' shorts. Besides the brood of canines, a penguin gets in the picture in this nice short.

Dog Daze (1939)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The gang owes Butch thirty-seven cents and after locating and taking care of a missing dog they're given a dollar. Before they can pay Butch off a goat eats the dollar but they figure they can make more by finding other lost dogs. DOG DAZE is considered a complete and utter disaster by most fans of the series and in fact many curse this movie saying it's the worst in the series. I'm not certainly I'd go that far but there's no question that this thing is a complete mess without any laughs. In fact, the entire film just seems extremely out of touch and it never really seems to know what it wants to do. It's obviously at least trying to be one of those silly stories where the gang needs money so they do something dumb to try and earn it. Outside of this I'm really not sure what they were going for because laughs certainly aren't going to be found here. The biggest problem with the film is that there's simply no funny moments. There are a few attempts at laughs but nothing ever works. I mean, was a roomful of dogs meant to be funny? Director George Sidney also deserves a lot of the blame because the pacing is pretty poor and there's never a spark of energy to be found.