Haunted Spooks

People say Lloyd is not as profound as Chaplin - maybe so, but wasn't the goal of a comic to make people laugh? That was something Lloyd could do that Chaplin couldn't - and it was, after all, the name of the game.

One unfortunate thing: I think you have to accept the jokes at african-americans expense as a (bad) product of the time and laugh at the other things in this film - and there are some really great gags in it, like the sequence where Lloyd's Boy tries to kill himself.

I can't see why Lloyd doesn't get greater distribution, and its a shame he isn't as well known as Chaplin, not to mention the brilliance of Buster Keaton, virtually unknown to the present generation of movie-goers, when Charlie Chaplin is a household name, even if many people never would have seen his (apparently - have not seen yet) great features. Certainly, when comparing only shorts of the three comics, I would rank them in order of humour: Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin; and cleverness: Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin. Even the plots of the former two are more advanced and interesting than those of Chaplin.

I found this 25-minute Harold Lloyd short to be better and better as it went on. As with a number of silent film comedy shorts, it starts slow and finishes fantastically. This was great not just in the end from the halfway point on, filled with numerous nonsense. It reminded of many Three Stooges films in which the boys wind up in some hotel or house or castle where guys are trying to scare them off with skeleton outfits, gorillas, etc. Those are always funny, and so is this movie. Maybe it inspired some of that Stooges lunacy in the next decade.

Here, Harold - to get the girl, naturally - has to do something: in this case, visit a haunted mansion, where a few people are waiting to scare him away. Hey, that was better than trying to kill himself, which he unsuccessfully did in some humorous scenes in the first half of the movie.

Overall: good laughs.

This short demonstrates all of Harold Lloyd's irreverence, his charm and his comic ability. Unfortunately, compared to others of his films, it does downplay his physical agility and he never finds the opportunity to climb a skyscraper.

The familiar setup is Harold's determination to meet the girl of his dreams and get married, coupled with the cliche of the heiress who must live up to the conditions of a will and visit a "haunted" mansion. Count on Lloyd to make the most of every opportunity for a laugh that comes his way.

Having seen this with a modern audience, I know that people today are distressed by the portrayals of African Americans in the film. That's really too bad, because the little black kid in this film proves himself a comedian easily on a par with Lloyd himself.

This Harold Lloyd short film is very funny indeed! You cannot watch this short without laughing at something every 30 seconds!

But before I comment on this hilarious short, I disagree with the fact that this is racist. This is because F Gwynplaine MacIntyre says that the title of this movie is meant to be a racial pun: 'spooks' being a 1920s slang term for Negroes. This is, in my opinion, extremely pointless to note for this when watching this film! This is because that the film's 'spooks' are supposed to be the uncle, played by Wallace Howe, who is trying to scare the Girl, played by Milfred Davies, who has just married to the Boy, played by Lloyd. Therefore, the black servants have nothing to do with scaring them away, because they just hide behind curtains, get covered in flour after jumping in the flour, or hide in a huge pair of trousers, or caught the Uncle in disguise as a ghost!

Now I am going to discuss the film.

First of all, the casting list at the beginning of the film gives the first chuckle from the film by saying that the Girl had 'never-well,only once or twice..' and the Uncle is a 'man of sorts-we are not saying what sort'! Pretty funny... or what?

The Boy's suicide attempts are very funny too. From trying to shot himself with a water pistol, falling off a bridge over shallow water, to falling over another bridge into a boat, it's all great slapstick!

The scene in the mansion where the Boy, the Girl, and the servants run away from the 'spooks', hide behind curtains or in flour or trousers is all hilarious. I could not stop laughing at those antics!

The only criticism I have is the well appropriate score is performed in a midi format. But with a silent film to create mood without music is pretty hard. So there is nothing they could do about it when they released this onto an all-region DVD,which was were I watched it from.

Apart from that, the score for this film is fantastic. I especially enjoyed the piece of music when the Boy and Girl entered into the mansion for the first time. That was a great piece to suit the eerie mood of the place.

Also, I thought the Little Boy, played by Ernest Morrison, almost stole the show by creating the illusion of that table moving, hiding in the flour, which made him look like a ghost when he scrambled out of it, and creating that illusion with the big pair trousers really was hilarious. I was glad that Morrison went on to have a well-establsihed career until his death.

I could not agree with Spuzzum, I do wish Harold Lloyd would get more attention.While Keaton and Chaplin ruled the roost of silent comedies , Harold Lloyd is ignored like that. This is too bad, but he could do it all, prat falls, stuntwork, very subtle comedy and he was a great actor as well. Also nothings justifies this opinion any more then the 5-7 minutes of Haunted Spooks. This is because we see Lloyd as a suitor of a rich socialite competing with another suitor, and in this amazing montage, we see them ducking it out, with Lloyd easily getting the better hand of the frustrated suitor.

Overall, if I was to describe this film in three words they would be very funny indeed!

What's even more amazing watching Harold Lloyd's antics is the knowing the comedian was involved in what could have been a career ending accident a few months earlier. While in production for his movie "Haunted Spooks," Lloyd was posing for promotional photos using a bomb as a prop. He lit the prop, which turned out to be a potent bomb that was long thought to have been discarded by studio workers because of its explosiveness. But somehow it was mixed in with other normal, non-lethal bomb props. When it exploded in Lloyd's hand, the bomb sheared off two of his fingers as well as part of his face, sending him to the hospital for a 16-day stay.

"I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again," Lloyd said years later. "I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive.' I still think so."

With perseverance and a four-month physical rehabilitation, along with a prosthesis glove over the artificial fingers to hide the injury, Lloyd finished "Haunted Spooks," released in March 1920.

The injury didn't stop the comedian from performing his own stunts for his upcoming films, which was especially difficult since he was right handed and the lost fingers were on his right hand. But not once did he complain. And the handicap doesn't show through his post-accident movies, even with him hanging by his fingertips onto the ledge in "High And Dizzy."