Spooks Run Wild (1941)

Simply A Masterpiece

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Although the quality of print was less than ideal, the film is dark and often murky, it nonetheless offers another fun spooky mansion, and Spooks Run Wild uses Bela Lugosi beautifully. By the early 40s, Lugosi was consigned to roles painting him as the bogeyman, but this film, while playing off the Dracula persona, does offer a pleasant twist regarding who he really is. There's an irony in this film: the East Side kids are creeped out by him so they always assume the worst, constantly trying to leave or flee his presence. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and their New York City Bowery buds are up to no good, caught being mischievous and shipped off to a camp for rehabilitation, go for a walk in the woods, when one of them (David Gorcey) is injured on a barbwire fence. Locating the old Billings mansion, the boys find Lugosi and his dwarf assistant, needing a place to rest and possible medical care. The night in this ominous mansion, where candlelight is the method of seeing in the dark, proves eerie for the boys as David walks about in a trance with the expected cobwebs, spiders, skulls, objects moving on their own, and never-ending rooms in the place while they try to find their pal. Lugosi is obviously enjoying the part as he never appears too malevolent or sinister, except the iconic "camera draws in to his predatory face as he approaches in close-up", talking to the boys with that thick accent (I personally never tired of despite his criticism for not trying to master the English language) that is almost always polite and civil. It is exactly right to me, this approach, so that what he might or might not be is left to us to determine. The radio announcement of this 'monster killer' does lay seed to whether or not Lugosi is him. Subplot includes a nurse (Dorothy Short) looking for the boys while the camp counselor (Dave O'Brien) remains disenchanted with being nursemaid to them. Dennis Moore is supposed killer hunter out to find Lugosi, but his presence seems anything but heroic. Good atmosphere and Lugosi's charisma help balance the film's dedication to the quipping kids always scattered and confused. Favorite scene for me: the knight's armor and how some of the kids no not what to do. As often was the case, the cops only show up at the very end once the killer is revealed. How the supposed haunts are explained away when Lugosi's occupation is revealed is quite the twist.

This is Lugosi's 1st movie with the East Side Kids, and one of his several with Dave O'Brien, someone as conceited and astringent as ever ('The Devil Bat', 'Bowery at Midnight'), here he's shown as nasty, to the kids as well as to his girlfriend.In fact, this one had the working title 'Ghosts …'.The 2nd movie made by Lugosi and the kids was better written, but the kids gave more bombastic performances, especially H. Hall. Though 'Spooks …' seems better budgeted, and certainly looks good and is nicely acted, Rosen wasn't as good a director as Beaudine, and the movie is somewhat bland, somewhat less lively, a bit lazy, and with a less good script; but Lugosi looks awesome, with another side of his talent: the nonchalant gentleman, chivalrous and handsome (his character is shown as not taking offense at the kids' repeatedly roughing him up, or being nasty), moreover he seemed pleased with his role. It begins with very nice footage of urban life, before the kids are sent to the camp. So, the 1st movie has a better look and acting, a fancy storyline, with the self-explained old house, almost a '30s movie, and it relies more on spoof, the intriguing things, like the attendant's insight, are comparatively loosely handled; the 2nd has better a better director and also script and feel, dynamism as zest in handling the subplots, appeal, the subplots (the newlyweds, the old couple, the policemen) are better handled, and funnier, here the several subplots are either teases, or barely sketched (the host walks about the house, the counselor, the constable, Van Grosch). The main difference is the one between a spoof and a comedy. Beaudine handled better than Rosen a better script. Here, the actors playing townspeople act reasonably well, yet the direction is less preoccupied with them than it should have; another difference is that the 2nd movie could boast a better cast (not only the bride, but some supporting roles as well). Let's mention two teases: the likable locations at the beginning (given that the storyline went somewhere else) and the boys marching through the underground tunnel, resurfacing in the cemetery to keep a council, deciding what seems at 1st an obviousness (to confront the bird, since they lack silver bullets and onion), then coming across with a good trick, scaring their host. So, though perhaps not as good as its follow-up, this 1st show isn't to be dismissed.Peewee was Muggs' real-life brother. Pat Costello has a small role as the driver.Rosemary Portia makes a nice bit part, as a waitress.The directors of the installments were usually the savvy Lewis (three movies, all in '40), W. Fox (9 movies, in '41-'45), Beaudine (6 movies, in '43-'45); from '42 on, W. Fox and Beaudine were the directors.Though H. Hall was included relatively lately as an East Side kid, he had been one of the Dead End Kids, on a par with Gorcey, Dell and Jordan.The kids arrive at the camp; and the old house isn't their host's.Lugosi gets roughed up a bit by the kids two times. In a story about a sexual predator, he's not the one. Muggs perusing a book belongs to his intellectualized outlook.Though mostly a farce (and some of the uncanny occurrences witnessed by the kids, like the skull and the moving boll and the skeleton, must or could be attributed to their anxiety, as their host explained them beforehand, while others, like the secret passages and the tunnel leading under the phony tombstone, can't be, and the weird attendant is straight fantasy), when Van Grosch attacks the girl it doesn't look like an attempt to murder her, Dorothy Short's struggle with Van Grosch looks like a rape, and it seems appropriate that sexuality was a topic for a series mainly aimed at teenagers.

SPOOKS RUN WILD (Monogram, 1941), directed by Phil Rosen, the seventh in the "East Side Kids" series, is probably best known due to its presence of top-billed Bela Lugosi, the master of horror, whose role as Dracula (Universal, 1931) has made his legendary. Although routinely done on a limited scale, and being a far cry from similar themes produced over at Universal, this entry gets by for what it is - a comedic horror mystery.The story begins briefly in the tenement district of New York where the East Side Kids, consisting of Danny (Bobby Jordan), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), Skinny (Bobby Stone), Pee Wee (David Gorcey), Scruno (Sammy Morrison) and its leader, Muggs Maginnis (Leo Gorcey), labeled underprivileged, being escorted by the police into a bus headed to the country for summer camp, as arranged by Jeff Dixon (Dave O'Brien). Dixon, a young man studying to become a lawyer, has a rough job ahead of him looking over these kids while working on his thesis. As the bus makes a stop in a small town called Hillside, the boys enter a sweet shop where Muggs takes an interest in a counter girl named Margie (Rosemary Partia). As Muggs arranges a meeting time with her, an announcement is heard over the radio warning residents to be aware of a "Monster Killer" on the loose. In the meantime, a mysterious man, Nardo (Bela Lugosi) and his dwarf assistant, Luigi (Angelo Rossitto) drive through town in a trailer full of coffins heading for the Billings Estate, which has been unoccupied for ten years. Later that evening, Muggs, sneaking out of camp to keep his date with Margie, is followed by his friends. Taking a short cut through the cemetery, Pee Wee is shot by a caretaker. Injured, the boys take him to a nearby mansion on top of the hill where Nardo offers his assistance by giving Pee-Wee a sedative and a room to rest for the night. As overnight guests, the East Side Kids encounter strange happenings, including Pee Wee roaming about in a zombie-like trance. As Linda Mason (Dorothy Short), Jeff's girlfriend and the camp nurse, goes out to search for the missing boys in the dead of night, she soon encounters a Doctor Von Grosch (Dennis Moore) for assistance.As with most film series placing its central characters in horror genre cycle or in a residence believed to be haunted, SPOOKS RUN WILD offers nothing new considering how the East Side Kids were involved in similar situations earlier in its second entry, THE GHOST CREEPS, re-titled BOYS OF THE CITY (1940). SPOOKS RUN WILD benefits greatly with Lugosi aboard dressed mostly in black attire as if he were Count Dracula. At one point he's addressed by Muggs as "Mr. Horror Man." There's the usual antics provided by kids ranging black member Scruno's encounter with a white spider; Muggs nearly getting trapped inside a coffin; to Glimpy's reply to Danny of having "gone to night school" as his reasoning as to how he can read in the dark, a reply repeated by Huntz Hall playing Sach to Leo Gorcey's Slip in THE BOWERY BOYS MEET THE MONSTERS (1954). Containing much of the familiar Monogram and P.R.C. stock underscoring, SPOOKS RUN WILD, set mostly in the dark of night with the gang carrying lighted candle plates, makes way to some fine suspense with laughs. Actually not bad of this type, with an interesting conclusion rounding up its story.Distributed on home video in the 1980s, later available on DVD as companion piece to GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (1943), the second and last East Side Kids comedy featuring Bela Lugosi; SPOOKS RUN WILD has turned up on occasion on Turner Classic Movies (with re-issue Astor Pictures Studio logo in place of Monogram) where it premiered in May 2004. Next in the series, MR. WISE GUY (1942)(**).

I've often joked in the past about some people's boundless (my words) affection for the later incarnations of The Dead End Kids but, actually, this and GHOST ON THE LOOSE (1943) are my first encounters with them. So, what's the verdict, then? Simple: their shtick is more tolerable when taken in smaller doses as was the case in DEAD END (1937) and ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938).This is instantly forgettable stuff and I can't see it having much rewatchability value in the future...especially since Bela Lugosi turns out to be a good guy after all! Didn't he learn his lesson with MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935)?