"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Monday, January 2, 2017

The Spook Speaks (1940)

Eh – not the best.  This one has a few fun gags, and it does get some bonus points for incorporating a live penguin, but there’s not much here.  Doesn’t really work for me.

Buster and his wife are hired to house-sit for a magician.  Unbeknownst to them, his house is rigged up with all sorts of tricks, such as trapdoors, revolving walls, and objects floating on fishing line (to be honest, it plays at least as much like a haunted house as it does a magician’s pad.)  In truth, the magician wants Buster around while he’s away to make sure nobody steals his tricks, but he evidently doesn’t explain this to Buster, who gets immediately freaked out by the “spooky” house.  When a stranded newlywed couple stops by for the night (with the young wife being very into “spiritualism,”) everything gets cranked up a notch.

The plot is an odd mixture of spare and kind of busy.  On the one hand, it’s little more than an excuse to do a lot of magician gags, haunted-house bits, and “scared” reaction shots.  On the other, it feels a little cluttered, especially once the newlyweds arrive on the scene.  There was a balance to be found somewhere in here, but the short doesn’t hit on it.

However, I’m not sure how much it would’ve helped.  “Scared of ghosts” plots feel super-dated these days when we’re talking actual bed-sheet ghosts, and the low-budget scares aren’t convincing enough to justify the knocking knees.  I don’t mind it as much in Buster’s silent work, like The Haunted House, and I’m not quite sure why.  For sure, it’s a lot more genuinely funny, but there’s more to it than that.  Maybe because the silent format better lends itself to a heightened sense of reality, so I’m better able to accept that Buster is actually scared of that person under a white sheet?  The cadence and music creates a sort of jauntiness that moves you along with the implausibility.  Here, though, the routines feel staler, like they exist in a kind of vacuum and you just sit there shaking your head because “that would never fool anyone.”

(Also, if the whole point of Buster being there is to make sure the magician’s rivals don’t steal his tricks, isn’t it in his best interest to let Buster know that the house is packed to the gills with tricks and other “spooky” stuff?  By not telling Buster, he runs the risk of Buster getting so scared he runs away and abandons his post, leaving the house wide open; poor planning on the magician’s part.)

But there is a little to like here.  I enjoy the running gag of Buster getting knocked off his feet by the strength of the alcohol he appropriates from the liquor cabinet to shore up his courage (although it recurs maybe one too many times.)  I do like the penguin, apropos of nothing, just because it’s cute, fun, and unexpected.  While the more straight-up haunted house stuff is unconvincing, some of the magic tricks – like the various trapdoors – are pretty neat.  And even when I don’t buy the scary stuff, I can’t help but like Buster’s “scared” acting.  I love his little “play it cool” routine where he sidles away, his hands fidgeting at his sides, right before he hightails it out of there – always funny.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and some drinking.

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