Haunted Spooks

This plot-packed and enjoyable but, ultimately, minor Harold Lloyd short gained some unexpected notoriety when the great comedian was seriously injured in an explosion during a publicity stunt for the film which cost him the loss of two fingers and necessitated the installation of prosthetics.

It starts off with frequent Lloyd co-star (and future wife) Mildred Davis inheriting an estate - on the condition that she's married and that she stays on the premises for a whole year. Soon, her greedy relatives begin to scheme how to drive her out - but, first, her lawyer determines to find her a husband opting, naturally, on Harold (once again suicidal over a failed romance). This first half provides the film with many of its best moments, as the latter section - relocating to Mississippi - mainly resorts to some crude racist humor and overly familiar ghostly 'manifestations'.

This was my third time viewing the film - the first as an extra on Image's DVD of the Silent version of THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1927) and the second on TCM, as part of a Harold Lloyd marathon in anticipation of the release of this same 7-Disc collection, when I was in Hollywood late last year; actually, I liked it better this time around, hence I upped the rating from **1/2 (besides, back then, I wasn't as familiar with the star's short films as I am now)!

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.

Haunted Spooks (1920)

*** (out of 4)

Harold Lloyd and his new bride move into a new house she's inherited and soon the ghosts start to show up but are the real? Here's one of the better shorts I've seen from Lloyd since there's laughs from start to finish. The various failed suicide attempts at the start are very funny but this got me remembering that all of the comedy greats of the silent era got laughs from suicide attempts. When the film moves to the haunted house more laughs follow including some politically incorrect ones.

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.

Harold Lloyd was always an impressive performer, funny, with a vulnerable streak mixed in with a hint of the daredevil. This movie doesn't have much in the way of stunts, but has a fairly amusing theme - suicidal boy (tries to jump in the river but gets stopped by someone asking him the time, etc., when jumps lands in a boat; tries to get run over by a car ...) marries winsome girl (the real-life Mrs Lloyd, Mildred Davis) and sets up home in a 'haunted' house spooked by family members trying to oust out the newlyweds.

Some racist gags typical of the period can be left aside, what is left is extremely funny, involving people covered in sheets wandering about, boxes which move, and things which go bump. Lloyd and Davis are both delightful and the movie speeds along at a good pace. Recommended.