Your Personal Ten Worsterestestest

[malaria]

Following mtw's suggestion, I am posting my ten least favorite Rascals talkie Roach shorts.  I've seen few of the silents and fewer of the post-Roach effforts, so I leave those to mtw and others with wider exposure to the full genre:

1.  Little Papa.  I have a brother ten years younger than I am.  There is generally nothing remotely funny in trying to get a baby to fall asleep.  The fargin' Battle of Shiloh is arguably a richer source of humor.

2.  Small Talk:   The audio was bad, the plot was worse, and all too often I just shut it off to watch... anything... Green Acres, Andy Of Mayberry.... just about any terrible 60s sitcom was better.

3.  Bouncing Babies:  Wheezer's mother in the film should have been reported to BCW for child abuse, indicted and sent off to do state time.

4.    A Tough Winter.  Saw it once as a kid before they yanked it.  I remembered it as boring and unfunny.  However, upon seeing it again as an adult, I had a new take: it was tedious, awful and appeared to have neither plot nor director. 


5.  Teacher's Beau:  Premise of short:  normally clever Rascals suddenly experience IQ drop into mid-double digits, can't figure out that married women take on the husband's name.  "Alfalfa wakes up as a carrot" and "Spanky contracts tetanus" would have been more promising themes.


6.  Lazy Days:  A cipher.  No idea why they even made it.   Coulda filmed a mud puddle and done just about as well.


7.  Sprucin' Up:  ENOUGH WITH MISS DAISY DIMPLE!!


8.   Pay As You Exit:  Wasn't the whole point of the series to portray kids in realistic KID situations, and not as small adults doing actress-y things?

9.   The Awful Tooth:  If I wanted some sort of moral lesson, I'd watch Davey and Goliath  (as I often did).  As a Jewish kid and a stranger to Lutheranism, I learned only much later that the "Davey" theme song was in fact "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
 
10.  Came The Brawn:  The Boxing Rascals shorts had no great appeal for me, at least after the drama of Chubby-messing-up-Joe-Cobb's-hair.

[mtw12055]

Roach Talkies

1. Lazy Days - I guess this one was made more so for the novelty of sound than anything else. But that doesn't make the film very enjoyable. It moves at a snail's pace.

2. Small Talk - Yes, I should be forgiving with this one, as it is the Rascals' first talkie. Awkwardness and slow pacing is inevitable. Even so, I still can't find a whole lot to enjoy.

3. A Tough Winter - Very, very odd film. I think we can all be thankful the Stepin' Fetchit series Roach was using this a backdoor pilot for never materialized.

4. Big Ears - An attempt at continuing the melodrama format used in films like FLY MY KITE, and later DOGS IS DOGS. However, it doesn't quite work here. The divorce element is depressing, and the 'resolution' for it feels incredibly forced and like a last-minute addition.

5. The Awful Tooth - Getting a little preview of what's to come in the MGM years.

6. Canned Fishing - Boy, Spanky and Alfalfa are dumb in this short.

7. Little Papa - Cute in parts (let's be honest - that Baby Patsy was pretty darned adorable). The film drags during it's second half, though.

8. Shivering Shakespeare - Definitely funny in spots, but while the idea of the kids constantly forgetting their lines is great, and comes off as very natural, the joke gets repeated a few too many times.

9. Forgotten Babies - Pretty entertaining until the babies start running loose. Things get a little too repetitive at that point. Maybe it plays better with a theatrical audience.

10. Anniversary Trouble - I'd love this one if not for the blackface sequence.



The MGM Era

1. Doin' Their Bit - Wartime morality boosting musical that barely features the main cast. Spanky and Froggy do a comedy routine that isn't funny, Janet talks to the soldiers in the audience as though they're children, and, to quote Bob Demoss, Beverly "Lady Liberty" Hudson "does her darndest Judy Garland imitation while looking like she's witnessing the resurrection of Christ."

2. Calling All Kids - Yet another wartime musical, and once again barely featuring the principal players. The kids handling the musical bits are quite talented, but they don't really fit into the Our Gang world.

3. Benjamin Franklin, Jr. - No kid would ever sit for a word-heavy play about Benjamin Franklin.

4. Election Daze - Had some potential, but never really goes there.

5. 1-2-3 Go! - What's this? A traffic safety film? Oh, my mistake. I thought I was watching "Our Gang."

6. All About Hash - Boy, I'm glad Mickey Gubitosi grew up to be such a good actor.

7. Tale of a Dog - Another 'valuable lesson' short about not jumping to conclusions. For no particular reason, at the end of the short, the dog talks, with a (pardon the expression) "negro" dialect, no less.

8. Ye Olde Minstrels - If this is an "Our Gang" short, then I'm the President of the United States (don't worry, I'm not).

9. Good Bad Boys - The Rascals attempt to rob a house. Buckwheat is forced to play such a frightened black stereotype that it comes off as annoying.

10. Family Troubles - Why is this one not higher (or lower in this case) on the list? It actually made me laugh. Not intentionally, mind you. But everything about it is so ridiculous, I can't help but crack up when I watch it.



The Silents
1. Fast Freight - Aside from some amusing moments with Farina, this spook comedy really drags.

2. Tired Business Men - When you take any of the Gang's likable elements and completely remove them.

3. Election Day - Oy, the amount of Farina abuse in this one is uncomfortable.

4. Seeing the World - This is basically a travelogue, with mostly forgettable material spliced in. I never really got into travelogues. Or forgettable material.

5. Chicken Feed - More Farina abuse. This time, his sister also gets treated rather badly. And once again, the Gang kids aren't terribly likable in this film. I wonder if the lack of Bob McGowan had something to do with that.

6. Baby Brother - More of a grotesque film.

7. Boys Will Be Joys - As neat as the Gang's homemade amusement park is, there's a little too much focus on it.

8. Fire Fighters - Only the series' second short, so roughness is to be expected. About five minutes of the film are comprised of the sort of talking animal scenes one would find in Roach's Dippy Doo Dads series, of which I was never a fan of. As brilliantly gifted as Sunshine Sammy was, the whole sequence where he tries to harness Dinah the Mule goes on a little too long. The lack of familiar faces in the Gang is a bit distracting. But otherwise, not too bad.

9. Sunday Calm - Several cute moments, but things drag just a little during the Gang's picnic activities. At times it almost feels like we're watching somebody's home movies.

10. The Big Town - Another comedy travelogue, this time focusing on New York City. This one does spend less time on the travel footage, though. There are some fun moments sprinkled in, but one wonders why more of these bits weren't kept in the New York setting.

[RJH]

Silents:

Commencement Day
Cradle Robbers
Official Officers
Boys Will be Joys
Seeing the World
Bring Home the Turkey
Baby Brother
Chicken Feed
The Glorious Fourth
Election Day

Roach Talkies:

Small Talk
Lazy Days
Bouncing Babies
Forgotten Babies
Wild Poses
Sprucin' Up
Little Papa
Canned Fishing
Feed 'em and Weep
The Awful Tooth

MGM:

Little Miss Pinkerton
Ye Olde Minstrels
Benjamin Franklin, Jr.
1-2-3-Go!
Helping Hands
Calling All Kids
Doin' Their Bit
Family Troubles
Time Out for Lessons
All About Hash

10 isn't enough, dishonorable mentions for Tale of a Dog, Don't Lie, Good Bad Boys, Robot Wrecks, Rover's Big Chance, Election Daze, Three Smart Guys, Radio Bugs, ...

[myhomeo]

Re: 'Came The Brawn.'

I dunno. One of its best points is that it's pretty much the only Rascals short I know of where one can see all of the 'Big Eight' (Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Porky, Buckwheat, Waldo, Butch and Woim) in fairly substantial parts. (Admittedly, Porky and Buckwheat are written as a single unit.) One of its worst, however, is that it's a rehash of 'Glove Taps,' with wrestling substituted for boxing.

[malaria]

LOL.

We do seem to be of one mind that "Lazy Days" and "Small Talk" should be pitched out of the canon. They are the Satanic Verses of Rascaldom.

[rascalstooge]

I haven't seen many Gang silents as well as the MGMs much, but insofar as the Roach talkies are concerned I only have a handful-"Boxing Gloves" and "Night N'Gales" come to mind right now.

[myhomeo]

Just rewatched 'Helping Hands' and, tragically, it probably ISN'T one of the top ten worst MGM shorts, mainly because it at least seems to understand it's supposed to be trying to be funny. Unfortunately, its attempts are on the level of the thing where the entire story stops dead so we can watch Spanky play straight to a kid doing a truly awful Italian dialect-comic routine. And yes, it is another "Support the War Effort" lecture. And it has Darla singing a stupid song for no reason, which is better than Janet singing a stupid song for no reason, but not by much. But after watching it, I didn't feel like throwing myself down a flight of stairs. That's the main difference.

[malaria]

Seems preachiness and stories with jackhammer-subtle *morals* increased exponentially in rascalworld as time went on. No more of that comical bopping stuffy old guys with bad toupees in the beezer.

[mtw12055]

The difference between the Roach films and the MGM films is a little like this. Let’s say the Gang is playing near a beautiful white picket fence. At Roach, the kids would find some way to unintentionally destroy it with their rough housing and then get chased off by the homeowner.

At MGM, nothing happens to the fence. Or maybe something does, the kids wholeheartedly apologize and offer to fix it, and instead of getting angry, the homeowner politely lectures them on being more careful.

[myhomeo]

There is a parallel to modern-day franchise 'reboots,' most notably in the simultaneous attempts to 'fix' things that weren't broken while making things that actually do need fixed worse.

To wit: 'Ye Olde Minstrels,' where the Gang puts on a minstrel show --Yes, a minstrel show-- Yes, blackface is included, and yep, there's a shot of a startled Buckwheat in whiteface, har har-- but they carefully explain Froggy's uncle, a retired showman, helps them stage these things...