SHIVERING SPOOKS (1926)

NOTE: Readers of this blog may have noticed that for some of the short subject entries, I’m recounting more of the plot details within the actual review as opposed to the plot synopsis. The reason is that it’s often simply easier to just give an overview and speak to the highlights of a feature film and still manage to convey its essence (as opposed to including every single detail) while in the one, two and three reelers the limited running times sometimes require a play-by-play of the whole film to get the gist across to the reader. “Shivering Spooks” is just such a case.

RATING: *** out of **** (WITH RESERVATIONS)

PLOT: The Our Gang (aka Little Rascals) kids – this time consisting of (Allen “Farina” Hoskins, Mary Kornman, Joe Cobb, Johnny Downs, Scooter Lowry, Jackie Condon, Bobby Young and Jay .R. Smith) just want to play. Unfortunately, this disrupts the local phony spiritualist racket’s “séance.” The phony spiritualists decide to give the kids the scare of their lives. Can the kids put their fears aside long enough to expose the creeps and bring them to justice?

REVIEW: So here we have the second-ever Our Gang horror-comedy during the series’ silent movie run (the first being the previous year’s “Shootin’ Injuns”). You’ll note that I’ve rated this short three out of four stars “with reservations.” I’ll get to why at the proper moment.

The film starts off with a startling gag. We read via the opening title card that “Farina and Scooter never had to hunt for trouble – Trouble chased them!” And sure enough, the pair is on the run from an adult who is chasing them. A truant officer perhaps? Perhaps not – this man is (amazingly) shooting a gun! The camera then pulls back more to reveal that the shooting man is aiming at another man who runs ahead of the kids. The man being shot at pulls out his own gun and turns around to chase the original shooter, and the kids turn around as well. This leads to a back-and-forth change in direction as each man flip-flops control of the situation. It’s funny to see the kids run back and forth but at the same time unsettling because there’s a gun involved (and as we’ll see later, this short doesn’t shy away from the unsettling).

Two kids do not a gang make, so we soon see the rest of the gang pop out of their “Secret Cave” (the sign on it features a backwards “s”) to see the one man duck into a marketplace and knock the proprietor out. The other man arrives and revives the proprietor, but the proprietor sends him off. The original man then hides in the back of the market. The kids run over and claim to have seen the man duck into the back room. The proprietor tries to bribe the kids to keep quiet with an apple.

These mysterious goings-on are soon explained. A title card reveals the one man as “Professor Fleece – fake spiritualistic medium – swindler – wanted by the police.” We see him go into the backroom to “The operating room – where spirits are faked to fool the “suckers” There are lots of people involved in the “operation” which consists of phony séances put on for women customers (aka scam victims) waiting to hear from their dead husbands. The head spiritualist proceeds to put on an eerie levitation show (even spookier than the one seen in “You’ll Find Out”) – we know it’s eerie because we see the women’s legs teeter-and-tottering! Unlike those widows, we also see members of the fraud’s gang operating levers and buttons in the back room.

Meanwhile, the kids are outside making a racket. The spiritualist goes to chase them away. “Aw, chase y’r own self – y’ big Turk!” Two elements jump out here. First is the ease with which politically incorrect insults and racial slurs are uttered (equating Turks with deceitful rogues) and second is the odd set-up of the racket’s proximity to the kids’ outdoor play area. Apparently the spiritualists’ base of operations is near an open air opening, yet somehow can remain pitch black. It doesn’t make much sense but the film keeps it going (one theory may be that the gang’s lair just has windows that they can hear the kids through although we never see such a window).

Cut to Mary with Scooter and Farina. She’s about to read from a book called “Ghost Stories.” We see a page from the book – “The ghastly ghost moaned and groaned as it glided between the marble tombstones. One long white arm, one white boney finger was extended…” etc. It is effectively scary. And then we get another dose of racial humor in this exchange:

FARINA: Why is ghosts allus white – ain’t they no colored ghosts?”

MARY: Colored people can’t be ghosts – how would you see them in the dark?

FARINIA: They could carry lanterns, couldn’t they?

I’ll get into this more at the conclusion of the review, but for now I’ll just note that many films from the 1920s through the ‘60s have been criticized for perpetuating racial stereotypes that were commonly held during the times in which the movies were made, and in the case of this film the criticism is definitely accurate. The above exchange is probably the mildest in the film, taking place as it does between two children who you could argue are just speaking out of innocent naiveté.

So getting back to that open-air lair or hideout with a window – your guess is as good as mine – one of the kids hits a baseball and it hits a phony spiritualist in the head. When the beaned baddie takes chase, the kids scamper into their secret cave. The spiritualists aren’t the only ones with tricks up their sleeves – using a clever, Rube Goldberg-esque device the kids pull strings and the shrubbery closes up behind them, camouflaging the entrance to their hideout. Just when they think they are safe, the cave begins to cave in on the kids! Ever-resourceful (and having a stash of pickaxes in the cave – maybe that’s how they got in in the first place), the kids decide to dig through the wall to the other side.

Back at the séance, a woman asks “Will I be married before I turn 24?” A spiritualist answers “Two knocks will signify “Yes” – Three knocks will mean “No” – and this sets up a gag rather succinctly as of course, they all hear the kids banging away. When the banging increases it naturally causes a panic among the séance customers.

The kids manage to break through the wall but they are all afraid to go through it, so they try to convince Farina to go first. “If you get killed, we’ll know it ain’t safe,” they tell him. Farina wasn’t born yesterday, however. “You won’t know it as much as I will,” he protests.

Just then Joe Cobb Joe Cobb sneezes and his sneeze blows out the candle. Now they are in the cave in the pitch black dark. They start making noises and yelps and that really scares the séance crowd – when they hear the noises beneath them they flee.

Meanwhile, the kids end up in the charlatans’ lair. Annoyed that their antics scared their customers away, the crooks decide to give the kids a good scare… and then some!



At first the scares are garden variety: For example, Farina runs at the sight of an Indian statue and then from a knight’s armor (whose arm falls off); while Joe keeps losing his pants and blaming it on Scooter, who he claims is so scared he keeps tugging at them (eventually he ties Scooter’s sleeves together).

Things soon escalate, both in terms of how scary the crooks get and the creative execution by the filmmakers of these bits. There are ingenious uses of subtitles within the film frames (as opposed to on title cards) when the criminals speak into a device that transmits their moans and groans through a loudspeaker. The words appear above the kids' heads, and the kids, not knowing where the "o-o-o-o"'s are coming from are mighty scared! Then when Farina hides under an end table the crooks in other room flip a switch that levitates the table up and down. It is a fantastic visual gag, punctuated by Farina’s exclamation, “How us angels do fly!”

It’s at this point that the film throws away all restraint regarding racial stereotypes. It all starts when one of the bad guys tells Farina that he’ll cut his ears off… and Farina turns white in fright.
This leads to the most disturbing element of the film, as the head charlatan dons what looks like a Klansman outfit that glows in the dark. On one level, the outfit is supposed to look like a scary ghost but unfortunately, it has the pointy-topped hood so common to Klan uniforms. This would be completely unsettling if not for the wild slapstick chase that ensues – both its silliness and the fact that Joe Cobb is also being chased by the pointy-hooded boogey man softens the blow a little, but just barely.

That’s not to say there aren’t positive elements to the scene – the mask the crook dons is scary (reminiscent of the face of the Man in the Moon in George Melies’ silent classic “A Trip to the Moon”), there is a great "flourescent" special effect that simulates the costume glowing, achieved by the use of a negative image wherein the "ghost" actually wears a black robe and the glowing effect comes from the shadows cast on the walls. Naturally frightened out of their wits by this phantasmogorial figure, Joe Cobb and Farina bump into each other a lot (for all intents and purposes it becomes the Joe Cobb and Farina show).

The scares continue at a frantic pace. The kids hide under a sheet on the bed as the bad guys keep pushing buttons and pulling levers to run their cheap funhouse style tricks. One such trick has a skeleton popping out of an armoire. There are also some goofy going’s on apart from the criminals, such as when the kids’ dog gets tangled up in a sheet and runs around wildly, the kids scampering away in fear.

While on the surface the gimmicks and gadgets the crooks employ are meant to be cheap, the visual results are quite effective, again due to some great effects of both the optical and mechanical variety. The atmosphere is so genuinely creepy at times that I believe people seeing this short in a theater for the first time were probably really scared, despite the fact that it’s a comedy.

The rousing finale anticipates Wheeler & Woolsey’s raucous finish to their own classic horror-comedy, 1935’s “The Nitwits,” as the kids get wise to what’s going on and drop vases from the balcony onto the heads of the criminals below. When the shopkeeper arrives with the police, the gang is rounded up and the kids are heroes.

Shivering Spooks is wildly inventive, the child performers are great, there are very effective special effects and a great mix of laughs and genuinely scary moments... but at the same time the fact that the charlatans wear pointed top white hoods like Klansman is really unsettling. There's a lot of racial humor in the old comedy films and usually the professionalism of the African-American performers helps these films rise above the tasteless gags, but when characters actually evoke the KKK it takes it to a whole other level that's tough to defend. So...

I give this film three stars for the kids, the atmosphere, the laughs and the scares, but zero stars for its racist content. The problem really is the pointy, triangular hoods – if the bad guys had just put sheets over their heads (as in some other Our Gang shorts), then the negative connotation disappears, but as it stands, the hoods are just a jarring image.

BEST DIALOGUE EXCHANGES: The best exchange is probably the aforementioned bit where Farina protests climbing through the wall.

Another good line is when one of the women at the séance asks, “Is my husband a good man? If so, since when?”

BEST GAGS: Without question, the bit with Farina and the levitating table is definitely the most riotous. Sight gags abound in this film, and the aforementioned antics of the kids being scared by the charlatans’ various tricks as well the sheet-wearing dog are all sure-fire laugh-getters.

SPOTTED IN THE CAST: One of the kids in the gang, Johnny Downs went on to have quite a bit of success elsewhere. Among his film roles, he was Little Boy Blue in Laurel & Hardy’s “Babes in Toyland” (aka “March of the Wooden Soldiers”), made a couple of funny shorts for Columbia as a young man, appeared in the horror film “The Mad Monster,” as well as in Martin & Lewis’ “The Caddy.” He also appeared on television as a kid show host, on a show that showed Popeye cartoons and Little Rascals(!) shorts.

Professor Fleece’s assistant was played by Ham Kinsey. Ham’s claim to fame? Doubling for Stan Laurel as his stunt stand-in in several Laurel & Hardy shorts and features.

Speaking of Laurel & Hardy, the detective in “Shivering Spooks” is none other than one of Stan & Ollie’s perennial menaces, Tiny Sandford. In addition to appearing in numerous Laurel & Hardy films (including the horror comedy, “The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case”), Sandford appeared several times with Charlie Chaplin (most notably in “The Gold Rush” and “Modern Times”) as well as in the Wheeler & Woolsey horror-comedy, “Mummy’s Boys.”

BUY THE FILM: This short has been released several times on various collections. The Lucky Corner, a site dedicated to Our Gang films has a listing of the various releases that include “Shivering Spooks” that you can check out by clicking here.

FURTHER READING: Without question, the only book anyone will ever need on the team is “Our Gang: the Life & Times of The Little Rascals” by Leonard Maltin. Buy the book here:








WATCH THE FILM: You can watch a portion of this public domain film here (this excerpt focuses on the scary climax):

shivering spooks - kewego
shivering spooks

Mots-clés : little rascals spooks

Video de user21

SHOOTIN' INJUNS (1925)

RATING: *** out of ****

PLOT: In this silent short featuring Our Gang (aka “Little Rascals” – here played by Mickey Daniels, Jackie Condon, Johnny Downs, Allen “Farina” Hoskins, Joe Cobb and Mary Kornman), the kids are a bit too fervent in their games of “Cowboys and Indians,” leading their parents to threaten to knock down the gang's “hideout” (aka “shack”). Undeterred, the kids set out west after nightfall in search of real Indians. They stumble upon a mysterious house that is actually a prototype “magnetic house” full of tricks and illusions that an inventor has created in hopes of a big sale to amusement park investors. Taking shelter from the storm outside, the group get more than they bargained for when they trip all the mechanical “funhouse” features and are scared out of their wits! Can they get out of the house with their nerves intact?

REVIEW: The *** out of **** rating I gave this film is an average. Based on the opening portion of this short alone I would have given the film one star or maybe even half a star. That’s because the opening concerns itself with the Our Gang kids involved in fantasy role play scenario as cowboys on the lookout for Indians. Some of what happens in these scenes is amusing in a cute way, but hardly laugh-out-loud funny. There are also a few uncomfortably un-PC overtones regarding how Indians are referred to in the title cards (both the “narration” and the kids’ “dialogue”) – although one of the kids’ mothers does reprimand her son saying the Indians should be left alone – they haven’t done any harm. If I were writing a book about western-comedies perhaps I’d feel differently, but the opening segment of “Shootin’ Injuns” presents little promise for the horror-comedy fan.

Thank goodness for broken promises! Once the film puts our protagonists inside the trick “magnetic” house that the kids think is haunted, the short becomes a wild free-for-all of wonderful “scare comedy” and stunning – even to modern audiences – special effects. This is the first ever Our Gang horror-comedy and I can truly say that of all their similar shorts to follow, not one tops its “scare” moments (although “Shivering Spooks” comes close). And so, the “spooky” portions of this short get a four star rating from me.

Average it out and you get a solid 3 star rating.

For this review then I’m going to spend less time on the western elements so I can get to the horror gags quicker.

The film starts in quaint fashion with a title card informing us that “In the life of every boy there comes the desire to go out west…” The kids are playing that old politically incorrect chestnut of a game “Cowboys and Indians” in their clubhouse, which is complete with secret tunnel entrance and elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions (Joe Cobb blows through a hose to announce his presence then Mickie flips a switch that opens the shrub like a trap door for Joe to climb down) . Each of the kids is introduced with their non de plume - the name of the legendary western character they’re playing (Micky as General Custer, Jackie as Daniel Boone, Johnny as “David” Crockett, and Farina as “Pancho Farina”)… except for Mary, who has been excluded from the game for suggesting that “some of the Indians might want to keep on living.”

Mary isn’t excluded for long - she strong-arms the gang into letting her into their cowboy games by threatening to tell her Mom, who she promises will “do some real scalping” if they persist to keep her out.
The film quickly shifts gears. After being told their shack will be knocked down the kids decide they need to literally head “out west” to find Indians and agree to meet at 8PM to begin their trek (“We’ll be in a foreign country by morning”). They don’t get far when the spooky stuff starts happening.

The fun starts with Farina, who is hiding under a sheet in the back of a laundry wagon. When the driver sees him he gets scared. Then both Farina and his driver see sheets on a clothesline eerily fluttering in the wind. Farina exclaims, “Splooks!”

Joe Cobb gets caught up in tree branches and the dangling laundry while Mickie and Johnnie are nearby dealing with scares of their own. First a black cat loudly knocks objects off a roof. This is followed by a tire blowing out. Finally a howling dog and a gunshot from a rifle toting man trying to get some sleep sends the boys completely off the deep end.

All of this is just a warm-up, for as the title card tells us, “The old inventor had perfected his Magnetic House – A magic maze of mechanical mysteries.” Magnets, mechanics, strings and electricity, to be exact. The inventor is trying to sell the house to investors who plan to put one “in every big amusement park in America!” Whether intentional or not, the inventor’s house acts as kind of a connecting device to the kids’ own gadgets from their hideout shown earlier in the film.

Needless to say, once the kids are inside the house the pace picks up considerably. There are lots and lots of tricks the totally frighten the kids, including:

• Doors that open on their own
• Lots of creepy paper mache’ heads that pop out of the floor and figures that plop out of closets and sit up in bed shooting guns.
• Spooky smoke emanating from sink drains.
• Arms that pop out of cakes.
• Cabinets with dancing products on their shelves.
• Skeletons that appear and disappear… and some that even grab the kids!
• Revolving secret doors in the walls,
• A 3-D portrait on the wall with googly eyes that pop out and a necktie for a tongue that flails about.
• Legs that pop out of the wall to kick the kids in the seat of the their pants.
• Revolving panels in walls.
• Solid windows – they look like real windows but when the kids try to jump through they just hit the wall. .
• Staircases that collapse as the kids climb them, sending them sliding down to the bottom.
• Balloons with flourescenet scary faces painted on their surfaces float around.
• Scary clown and elephant imagery add to the fright-fest.

In his seminal book “Our Gang: the Life & Times of the Little Rascals,” film historian Leonard Maltin singled out two sequences as being the most creative (which in this film full of creativity is saying a lot):

• A single skeleton at the top of the stairs multiplies into several skeletons, and then the various skeletons slide down the banister only to come back together as one skeleton at the bottom of the stairs!

• While running from a skeleton Farina actually freezes in place and a second shadow image of Farina actually leaps out of the skin of the original to accentuate how frightened the character is! Then Farina rejoins that shadow figure to become one again (this trick would be employed again in the classic sound era Our Gang short, “Mama’s Little Pirate”).



All tolled it is a frenzy of amazing action. Like “Shivering Spooks” which followed a year later, some of the optical effects are truly frightening and must have really unnerved audiences. But most of the effects are so outlandish and exaggerated that the effect is more like a cartoon and less scary than some of “Shivering Spooks” scares. In any event the effects in “Shootin’ Injuns” trump those seen in “Shivering Spooks” – and given how amazing the scare scenes in “Shivering Spooks” that is quite the endorsement!

In the finale, the kids are saved by their concerned parents who have arrived on the scene… but not before the parents themselves are amusingly scared by the magnetic home’s tricks!

The sheer virtuosity and imagination at work here is unmatched even by some of the better horror-comedies, probably because it’s all so crazy that it’s unexpected – the viewer is surprised at every turn by the dizzying array of spectral spectacles on display. If you have an opportunity to see it on video, simply fast-forward to the haunted house scene and you will not be disappointed!

BEST DIALOGUE: This is a silent film so there isn’t any dialogue – just title cards. Most of the dialogue in this one is uncharacteristically mundane (the silents often had very witty title cards) or just plain politically incorrect, but Joe Cobb does get to make the understatement of the year (or at the very least this short) when he mutters “If I ever get outta' this alive, I’ll never run away from home a’gin!”

BEST GAGS: All the gags mentioned above!

SPOTTED IN THE CAST: A few notable adult actors. Richard Daniels, real-life father of Mickey plays the inventor here but often played Mickey’s dad (and other kids’ dads) in various silent Our Gang shorts. Rotund Martin Wolfkeil is Joe Cobb’s dad, “Tonnage.” Before Stan Laurel teamed with heavyweight Oliver Hardy, beefy Wolfkeil appeared in a variety of solo Laurel films. William Gillespie, playing yet another dad here has the most impressive resume of all, having had parts in several other Our Gang shorts as well as a half dozen classic Laurel & Hardy films (he’s the piano salesman in “The Music Box”), over a half dozen Harold Lloyd movies (including the classic horror-comedy “Haunted Spooks”), some Chaplin shorts and the sublime Snub Pollard short “It’s Gift,” where he played oil executive “Weller Pump.”

BUY THE FILM: This short has been released several times on various collections. The Lucky Corner, a site dedicated to Our Gang films has a listing of the various releases that include “Shootin' Injunss” that you can check out by clicking here.

FURTHER READING: There are two great blogs highlighting the horror comedies of Our Gang/the Little Rascals. Click here to read The Haunted Closet and click here to read Ghosts of Halloween Past.

As for books, the ultimate one on the kids is “Our Gang: the Life & Times of The Little Rascals” by Leonard Maltin. Buy the book here:













WATCH THE FILM: Since this is a short, and a silent one at that no trailer is available. However, you can enjoy this amazing clip: