HAUNTED SPOOKS is a legendary film in the story of Harold Lloyd - and very little of it has to do with the film itself. Filming began in August of 1919 and ended in January 1920. Not all of those months were spent shooting this film, however. Two weeks into the shooting schedule in August, Harold was doing some publicity photos with some prop bombs - or so he thought. It turns out one of the bombs was real. The bomb was lit while Harold held it and exploded. He was lucky it didn’t kill him, but the explosion did leave severe scars on his face, made him temporarily blind and most long lasting, blew off two fingers on his right hand. Going forward, Harold would wear a prosthetic hand in his films. While I do have to ask what a real bomb was doing in the set, it is a testimony to Harold that he would suffer such a huge obstacle and not only come back, but continue to do what he did before in even better films. Oh, and to add more to the morbid nature of all this. There is a heavy set butler in this film early on, played by Dee Lampton. Aged 20, he was dead 9/2/19 of appendicitis, so he was dead only weeks after his scenes were shot.
All this out of the way, we still have a film to discuss. HAUNTED SPOOKS, in a nutshell, is a brilliantly constructed comedy, perhaps his most brilliant to date, until they get into the haunted house. When they get into the haunted house, the film becomes a fun, but basic scare comedy. The basic plot of the film is the kind of thing that was common in the silent era and done on stage several times. Somebody, in this case, Mildred Davis, inherits a fortune, but she has to be married and stay in the relatives mansion with her husband for a year. If she doesn’t, she loses the fortune and it goes to her uncle, who sets the house up to appear haunted and scare Mildred away. This type of plot is deeply a part of the early American horror film. Mildred Davis herself is great here. She starts out playing this real unbelievably innocent girl who loves animals and is too good be to be true to the point of comic absurdity. Mildred was great at playing that kind of role and it would only be her that does it, as it was uncommon for Bebe Daniels or Jobyna Ralston. It gets more comical in that the moment she marries Harold, she instantly grows up and starts barking orders.
The beginning and middle of this film are so brilliantly constructed. Harold, before meeting Mildred, is trying to woo this other girl and has great scenes with a rival in trying to get the father’s permission for marriage. Harold’s intro scene is the girl sitting on his lap, only to get up and reveal Harold. Very funny. Then there are these perfectly symmetrical chases and the rivals pushing each other back plus a comical mini fight scene.
Once Harold wins the father’s permission, the girl has found another lover. This seamlessly leads to Harold’s next extended gag - committing suicide. Keaton did a similar thing a bit later in HARD LUCK, but Harold is just as brilliant here. I won’t give gags away, but let’s just say clever things involving cars, guns, and bridges that all flow perfectly together. This part ends when the lawyer that is trying to get Mildred married so she can have her fortune almost runs over a suicidal Harold. So naturally, he thinks to get this loon married to Mildred.
Once they very suddenly get married and Mildred takes over, we get a brilliant car scene. Great gag involving trying to pass another car and chickens. Mildred has a fenced box with chickens in it and a lot of comedy comes out of this which I won’t give away. The point is that up until now, all of this stuff flows together so perfectly and is consistently witty and funny. Very few could construct multiple comedy scenes one after the other like Lloyd at his best, and HAUNTED SPOOKS is a great example.
The haunted house stuff is a bunch of scared gags which is fun for the most part but doesn’t quite have the brilliance of what came before. We do get to see “Sunshine” Sammy Morrison, an extremely talented kid who was the original black male role in the Our Gang films and would have a long career going as far as playing in The East Side Kids in the forties. We also get to see a frightened Harold get his iconic hair spike in the air when scared, somewhat in the same vein as when Moe’s hair got blown upwards when scared.
So overall, a good film that gets overshadowed by behind the scenes events. Going forward, these Lloyd shorts get even better.
