No Noise

No Noise (1923)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Entertaining Our Gang comedy has poor Mickey in the hospital being fed Castor Oil when his friends stop by the pay him a visit. As you'd expect, the kids start making all sorts of noise so the doctors decide to teach them a lesson by scaring them. This isn't the greatest comedy ever written and no one is going to mistake it for a masterpiece but at the same time there are enough good laughs here to make it worth sitting through even if you're not a fan of the series. The first part of the movie focuses in on Mickey as he tries to trick the nurses out of taking the oil but his trick backfires and he gets a mouthful. The second part of the film has the kids running around and the doctors scaring them in a variety of ways. One way is making them think they're ill and another comes by using the skeletons in the hospital. The film actually turns into a "horror-comedy" thanks to the ghosts, skulls and skeletons scaring the kids and a lot of it is funny. One of the highlights in the film is when the boys get electrocuted and Farina ends up looking like the monster from THE GOLEM. This one here runs a little bit shorter than some of the other Our Gang shorts and its pacing is also a lot faster, which is a major plus.