Seein' Things (1924)
** (out of 4)
Here's yet another rather weak Our Gang short, although this one here is certainly worth viewing if you like strange movies. At the start we learn that Farina is suffering nightmares each time he eats meat. His mom tells him to stay away from the stuff but he loves it so much he sneaks out of the house and ends up eating several chickens. That night she puts him to bed and sure enough he begins to have nightmares that the other kids are chasing him. Basing a kids comedy around one kid having nightmares and being stalked by other kids might seem rather bizarre but this was 1924 we're talking about. I can't say I enjoyed this film since it didn't once make me laugh but at the same time it's simply so bizarre that you can't help keep your eyes glued to your television just wondering where it's going to go next. The first fifteen-minutes are rather bland without much going on but the ending is when things really start to pick up. You can tell that Hal Roach was trying to capture the Harold Lloyd style of "thrill" comedies because a lot of the action has Farina hanging off the side of a building or in danger of falling. None of it comes close to what Lloyd was able to do because of how fake the effects look. Other strange things have Farina at the bottom of the ocean with a large fish.
