Spook Louder
Entry updated 9 June 2024. Tagged: Film.
Short US film (1943). Columbia Pictures. Directed by Del Lord. Written by Clyde Bruckman. Cast includes Stanley Blystone, Symona Boniface (uncredited), Stanley Brown (uncredited), Heinie Conklin (uncredited), Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Moe Howard, William Kelley (uncredited), Lew Kelly, Theodore Lorch (uncredited), Charles Middleton (uncredited), Shirley Patterson and Helen Servis (uncredited). 17 minutes. Black and white.
In the frame story, "investigator" Dunkfeather (Kelly) explains to a reporter (Brown) how he broke up a notorious spy ring. He begins by describing three salesmen (Larry Fine, Curly Howard, and Moe Howard – the Three Stooges at the time) who were going door to door selling their miraculous weight-reducing machine (which by all appearances does little more than flashing lights and causing the person wearing it on his chest to vibrate). After one unsuccessful solicitation, they arrive at the house of a Scientist, Mr Graves (Lorch), who mistakes them for the caretakers he has hired to watch his house to guard against foreign spies seeking his Inventions, prominently including the Death Ray that can "destroy millions"; he has been summoned to demonstrate that invention to government officials in Washington, presumably interested in its projected use in World War Two. After he departs, the Stooges immediately encounter three spies: their leader (Blystone) and two assistants inexplicably dressed as a skeleton (Kelley) and a devil (Conklin). Predictable antics ensue involving conflicts between the Stooges and the spies before the Stooges finally defeat the spies with a bomb given to them by Graves, though they are periodically interrupted by thrown pies on the face which are finally attributed, implausibly, to the work of Dunkfeather; he is then struck with an unexplained pie in his own face.
Aside from the two items of marginal sf interest – the Stooges' obviously fraudulent weight-reducing machine and Graves's referenced death ray – this is a typical Stooges feature incorporating incongruous haunted-house Clichés (see Horror in SF), such as a revolving bookcase, the horrific costumes of the spies, and the brief appearance of an inanimate mummy, into its sf story. It is significant that the film refers to a "death ray" without any explanation, indicating that a common trope in Pulp sf had then penetrated the cultural zeitgeist. Another noteworthy aspect of the film is the uncredited appearance of Charles Middleton, best known for portraying Ming the Merciless in the Flash Gordon serials, as Graves's butler. Some of the available versions of the film edit out its derogatory references to "Japs", which were understandably common in America during World War Two. [GW]
see also: Three Stooges Films.
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