So You Want to Be an Heir

So You Want to Be an Heir (1953)

*** (out of 4)

A somewhat different pace for the Joe McDoakes series has our hero receiving a letter from his dying grandmother saying he's going to inherit her million dollar estate. Joe rushes to her bedside and soon his other relatives are trying to kill him. This comedy actually enters the "old dark house" genre and manages to be rather funny even though this isn't the type of film we come to expect from McDoakes. George O'Hanlon plays not only Joe but also his uncle, cousin, grandmother and another character. He actually does a very good job at playing all the relatives and manages to make all the characters quite funny. There are many spoofs of the old dark house genre including the various murder suspects and the big bats flying around. It's also worth noting that there's one scene where a deformed lawyer tells McDoakes to "walk this way" and McDoakes actually walks the same way. This is the same gag later used in Young Frankenstein so you have to think either Brooks or Wilder saw this film.

.......SORT OF LIKE a Jerry Lewis picture! We mean he does 5 different characters, with only his wife, Alice (Phyllis Coates) and multi-purpose player, Phil Van Zandt hamming it up as deformed, Igor-like Lawyer, Hideous P. Scroogington, Esq.

IN THE TIME and space allowed to run one measly reel of film, Director/Writer Richard L. Bare and Writer/Star George O'Hanlon manage to do a really neat little send-up of all of those "OLD DARK HOUSE" type of pot boilers so popular in the 1930's & '40's. There is no cliché of Horror that they didn't visit.

CERTAINLY IT WAS not a vehicle designed to showcase the virtuoso acting of the Star; nor is it to be considered to display the tiffany writing and C.B. De Mille-type direction. The beauty of the MC DOAKES Series is the lack of pretension they emanate. never is there any claims nor hopes to qualify as "Art." NO SIREE BOB, these installments exist for two basic reasons; with those being: to help to fill out the program for the local exhibitors and secondly o make us laugh.

IT WOULD APPEAR that the production team succeeded, isn't that right, Schultz?