Ghost Parade (1931)

The owners of an old mansion are eager to sell, but strange things are going on, noises from empty rooms and whatnot. Maybe the ghost of and uncle who died during the civil war?

Nope, it's the buyers trying to get the house cheap because they know there is oil on the property. There, I spoiled this crap hole of a movie. Now you won't have to see it!

Maybe that's not fair, but Mack Stennett (producer of over eleven hundred shorts, mostly silent) once lamented that the public was getting harder and harder to make laugh. That attitude of rising to the occasion can be seen in full force here. What could be funnier that someone walking down the stairs slowly realizing that someone in a costume was behind them, but being to stereo typically frightened to turn around and look ...

Over, and over, and over again!

Seriously, this sucker got tedious at 18 minutes! Nuff said about this stinker.

Mack Stennett was one of the founders of Keystone, producers of many early comedies featuring the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, and, of course, the Keystone Kops. Considered a fairly good actor, mostly by himself, he appeared in over 350 of his own shorts. Luckily few after 1916. For anyone unfamiliar with early comedy shorts, the production pace was unbelievable. Some years he would produce over forty shorts. This schedule left little time for such frivolities like script, rehearsals, and retakes. The end result? Well, lets just say audiences are becoming harder and harder to please.

Skip this one, shall we? What interested me is the haunted house theme. I am interested in when certain cliche's were first used. Nothing of interest here, however.

AMRU 2.0.