Ghost Parade (1931)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Unfunny film from Mack Sennett has Andy Clyde and a group of people in a creepy old house when they start to experience various hauntings. A constable (Harry Gribbon) comes to investigate but does very little other than flirt with a cute woman. GHOST PARADE is a pretty bad spoof of the "old dark house" genre and it's pretty worthless from start to finish. There were a couple mildly interesting moments but those are few and very far between and for the most part you're just sitting there watching forced jokes fall flat on their face. I think the biggest problem is that the film doesn't even try to be funny. There's never any clear work being done to get a joke to work and instead it seems like everyone is just going through the motions. There's a sequence with a talking dog, which is just embarrassing. There's an even dumber sequence where everyone is eating at the dinner table when stuff starts to happen below. Both Clyde and Gribbon are wasted in their roles as is the rest of the supporting cast. I'm sure Sennett was trying to do something with this movie but it's clear that his style of comedy was way past its prime.
