SPOOKS RUN WILD (1941) ** Bela Lugosi vs. The East Side Kids. Well, there are a lot of them, so it could be close. They have a brawl, or pale facsimile, but the real battle is the battle of ridiculous accents and bad lines. Bela has the most dramatically over-written, in a graveyard, no less; but the Kids have repeated utterances that reek with wiseguy backstreets authenticity. Bela's been in his adopted home for too long, and is sounding less Hungarian than the most classic days, but to Western ears he still sounds fairly strange. The Kids, rising from the bowels of Brooklyn like steamed heat, sound every bit as weird, and utilize vocabularies every bit as limited; sometimes it seems that hardly a frame goes by without someone noting the potentiality or impending nature of a "moiduh." It's all sloppy, juvenile, third-rate (except for the ghost spider and string), and enjoyable enough. Obviously after an hour or so the battle of the accents loses some of its glamour and early 20th century delinquency's clichés are exhausted, and even the most indiscriminate viewer is going to notice that there's no plot to fall back on and that these scenes are all very familiar (from the previous year's Boys of the City-if something worked in those days they just did it again. My, how times have changed). Too bad! No one ever said that haunted houses are invariably literary masterpieces. Go watch Shakespeah or somethin', hah?
back to Brilliant Observations on 1776 Films home
go back home, or send me email
no more reviews! I want to buy your novel!