All that’s here is – Halloween Ha ha’s (clap clap!)

Halloween Boo Boo’s! (clap clap!)

Haunted House Ha Ha’s

I saved the best for last! What better way to wrap up the Halloween Haunted House Ha Ha’s than with The Three Stooges?  Now now, I know some readers out there be like, “Really?  These guys?”  To youze guyz and galz, I unequivocally and proudly declare “YES. These guys! They are the best!” 

The Three Stooges, some love them, some hate them.  I love them. As I mentioned in a post at the beginning of this month, these three gentlemen of above average intelligence are partly responsible for my love of horror. When I was a kid, Moe, Larry and Curly or Shemp were on television every weekday afternoon. They had several spooky episodes. These were my favorites!

For your viewing pleasure, until Youtube removes them (if this is the case at this time, I’m sorry), I have gathered several, if not all the episodes which I think qualify as “haunted house” shorts.  There are many more spooky episodes out there, but this being a haunted house blog, I am only featuring the shorts that take place in some kind of mansion, castle, or house where weird or spooky things are going on.  There are some episodes that feature a killer or two chasing the Stooges around in some kind of house that are not part of this collection. While they might be enjoyable, they fall short of meeting my “haunted house worthy” standards. (I’m a haunted house snob damn it!)

I’m not going to bother describing The Three Stooges or analyze their style of humor. If you really unfamiliar with these comedians from the days of long ago, then gosh, I don’t know what to say! Nor will I will be “reviewing” these episodes either, not in a critical sense anyway.  I will simply write up a little something about each episode. Brief plot descriptions, some trivia, shit like that!  And then, I will post the Youtube links to the  specific shorts that I am writing about (until they are taken down).

Ready? Here we go!!!!!!!!

 

(The first two episodes I present feature Curly as the third stooge)

Spook Louder – Short #69 – 1943

Plot in short:

 In this creepy tale, The Stooges are tasked with watching over a creepy house while guarding top-secret inventions. The Stooges have their work cut out for them. They must outsmart three thieving spies that are trespassing on the premises and keep their cool in the midst of all sorts of spooky shenanigans. If all this isn’t bad enough, all parties in this house, spies and Stooges, must deal with a phantom pie thrower.

My observations:

If you are to only watch one thing from this short film, go to the 4:30 mark. There is a creepy clock on the wall that you MUST see. It’s a scene of a supposedly Russian clock, in the shape of a weird looking caricature of someone, and it speaks. It says “Yo…ho….ho…..ho!”

The three spies dress in costume. One dresses in black and wears a black hat, another dresses as a devil,  another as a skeleton. In a later episode, these same three costumes are used are worn by another trio of Stooge antagonists. More on this later.

If a Body Meets a Body – Short # 86  – 1945

 Plot in short:

Curly is due to inherit a fortune from a rich, deceased uncle.  To collect, the Three Stooges must be present at the reading of the will, which is to take place in the late of night at the late Uncle’s spooky mansion. There will be murders. Possibly even ghosts!

Trivia via Wikipedia

This is the first film to star Curly after he suffered a stroke. It is noted that he is less energetic than in his previous films.

The plot device is borrowed from a Laurel and Hardy film The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, The Laurel and Hardy film is a spoof on the 1927 film “The Cat and the Canary”

My observations:

In this film, a bird enters a skull and wears it like a shell. Bird walks around with it, scaring The Stooges into thinking it’s an animated skull. This comedic device of a flying creature manipulating a skull is repeated several times in different films. In fact, it appears in a couple more films featured here in this piece!  

There is a rotating book case which leads to a secret room. This is also a reoccurring plot device featured in several of their films, not to mention being featured in other films that have nothing to do with The Three Stooges. A rotating book case in other films? Shocking!

 

(The remaining episodes feature Shemp as the third stooge. With one exception. You’ll see!)

 

Hot Scots  – Short# 108  – 1948

Plot in short:

The Three Stooges answer an employment ad for The Scotland Yard. The ad seeks three “yard men” and the Stooges think they are applying for the positions of inspectors. Instead, they end up picking up trash in the yard. (Get it, “yard” men? Yuk Yuk!)

But the Stooges get their chance when they happen upon a piece of trash that was actually a request for three inspectors to guard a Duke’s precious antiques at his castle. The Duke leaves, The Stooges guard and the thieves come out to play, dressed in scary costumes.

Trivia via Wikipedia

This short was later remade as Scotched in Scotland , Short #158 – 1954 using stock footage. The 1950s found the Stooges in a predicament where they were contractually bound to produce more films in a short period of time with an ever-tightening budget. Director Jules White workaround was to rework old scenes into new scenarios.

My observations:

As a kid, I loved seeing this masked dude on my TV set.

This mask, worn by a thief in Hot Scots, made such an impression on me that I thought it was used as a prop in several episodes. As I combed through all the spooky Stooges episodes that I could get my hands on, it never resurfaced. So I guess I was wrong. The exception would be Scotched in Scotland, which has slightly different scenes, but the masked dude is in both. This part of the confusion.

The Ghost Talks – Short #113 – 1949

Plot in short:

The Stooges are movers tasked with moving various pieces of antique furniture and other items from a haunted castle. One such item is suit of armor that is haunted by the ghost of Peeping Tom. As per the legend, the spirit confides with the Stooges that he was beheaded one thousand years before for opening his shudders on the night Lady Godiva rode her horse naked through the streets.  He will not have his armor removed. Meanwhile, ghostly skeletons haunt the place and scare The Stooges as well.

In the end, a fully clothed Lady Godiva on her horse enters the house and takes Peeping Tom in his armor away. History repeats itself and the devastating scene from 1000 years ago plays out. The Stooges open the shudders, hoping to see a naked Lady Godiva. They hear cheers. No, they don’t get beheaded. Instead, pies are thrown at the window and into their faces.

Trivia via Wikipedia:

This short was later remade as Creeps – Short #168- 1956 using stock footage

My observations:

The gag of “flying animal trapped in skull” reoccurs in this film. This time it is an own that dons the bonehead. He flies around saying “WHO! WHO! WHO!”

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein premiered was released in 1948. The film features a scene where the comedic duo are tasked with moving wax figures of monsters. These monsters are real, in fact, as a frightened Costello would observe. Perhaps the plot of The Ghost Talks, a short released in 1949,  borrows from A and C? Maybe? Hmmmm??

Could not find this on youtube. So here is a dailymotion link

 

Dopey Dicks – Short #122 – 1950

Plot in short:

The Stooges must rescue a woman from a mad scientist. He has designed a man-robot, which looks like a robotic mannequin. Anyway, the robot keeps knocking its head off when he bumps it into anything. It can’t see! So the Mad Doc wants to replace the head with a human head and brain.  For a good part of this film, The Stooges are chased by this headless robot.

 

My observations:

I say that this short barely squeaks in as a “haunted house” film. No ghosts or skeletons, but it is set in a creepy house with secret panels and passages. The headless robot kind of mimics a ghost.

Philip Van Zandt plays the mad scientist. I single him out because he plays a mad scientist in several Three Stooges shorts.

Spooks – Short #148 – 1953

Plot in short:

Very similar plot to Dopey Dicks. A mad scientist has kidnapped a woman once again. Again, the villain is played by Philip Van Zandt. This time, the mad doc wants to put the woman’s brain into the head of a gorilla. The Three Stooges must rescue her from this house of horrors.

Trivia via Wikipedia:

3D films were the thing in the early 50s. The Stooges wanted to get on the bandwagon. Therefore, this film was shot in 3D!

My observations:

After reading about the “filmed for 3D”, I noticed the places that would feature this effect.  There is knife throwing, pitchfork lunging, blowtorch flaming, cleaver wielding, Moe’s two fingers poking. But perhaps the most outrageous three-dimensional horror is a bat with Shemp’s face!  Shemp comments on what an ugly creature it is!

Scotched in Scotland – Short #158 – 1954

Plot in short:

 This is the remake of Hot Scots. The introduction is different. In the original, Moe dances to bagpipe music with a woman while a man wearing a sheik outfit hides in a picture frame, disguised as the portrait. This scene is omitted in this film. Instead, Moe and Shemp are spooked by a , you guessed it, a bird in a skull that carries the bone head and a sheet when it flies.

A new soundtrack features the sounds of spooky winds.

 

Creeps – Short #168 –  1956

Plot in short:

This is a remake of the 1949 The Ghost Talks short using stock footage.  This time, there are three baby stooges in bed and The Three Adult Stooges tell them a bedtime story involving ghosts, knights, and murders. They tell the story of the time they are movers and tasked with moving the haunted knight armor.

The scene involving Lady Godiva is omitted. It ends, instead, with the Baby Stooges not satisfied with the story, crying that they want another story. To get them to sleep, the adult stooges hit them over the head with a hammer.

My observations:

There is a barking bat-dog hanging on the wall again. This happens in Spook Louder.

EXTRA  – Three Pests in a Mess, 1945 Short# 83 (Not a Haunted House short, but

a scary graveyard. And Curly Returns!)

Plot in short:

Curly mistakenly thinks things he murdered a man when he accidentally shoots a mannequin.  The Three Stooges bag “the body” and take it to a cemetery.  Their actions are observed by a night watchman. He phones for help, reporting that prowlers are on the loose. Three helpers arrive straight from a masquerade party.  They are dressed in the same outfits as the spies in the short Spook Louder. This time, regular Stooge antagonist Vernon Dent dons the costume of the man in black.

(First Picture – Costumes used in 1943 Spook Louder. Second Picture – Costumes used in 1945 Three Pests in a Mess)

Hey you

Me?

Yeah you! Remember that one “American Horror Story” season, with that lodge by the lake and that creepy blue lady ghost?

Let me think…Oh yeah! She was creepy. Man, Jessica Lange impressed again, this time as Constance Leigh Welling, the self-published “authoress.”  Dragging around her assistant by his nose, the poor young Luke Donovan, played so well by Evan Peters. How she thought she was so talented, so young, so beautiful, so popular! That old narcissistic bitch! She really got her comeuppance! Thank God the daughter of the owners, Sara Baxter-Bellamy played by Taissa Farmiga, became Luke’s love interest, making Constance jealous and eventually giving him the encouragement to leave that bitch.

Uh..yeah.

Oh, and I won’t forget Dr. Roger Siechert, played by Dylan McDermott. That hilarious German-folk enthusiast, who not only took up killing people, but also liked to stick that severed finger up is ass! He called it the “chocolate wander” and it was also “The Happy Wander”, like the German song, “Valeri, Valera! Valeri , Valer- Ha Ha Ha Ha HA HA HA “

Yeah..sure.

How about that Hammerhead serial killer, named because he killed his victims with the hammer! Man, we never discovered who he was until the end. Who played him?

Beats me. Hey listen-

And through it all – the blue lady ghost! When the bathrooms in the lodge rooms flood, there were her soggy footprints in the carpeting. And even when there was no flooding, the mirrors of the bathrooms would suddenly fill up with moisture, and when that happened you just knew the blue lady was coming! You just knew it!  Thanks for the memories! I’m going to log in to Netflix and watch it again!

You won’t find it. I’ve been trying to stop you before you got to carried away, but I was too late.

What do you mean? And why did they take it down already?

I mean, it never aired. It wasn’t an American Horror Story season at all. This was a book by Thorne and Cross called “The Cliffhouse Haunting”

Then why did you tell me it was?

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

But I know! Afterall, I’m the idiot that wrote up that goofy exchange up there! A little more than halfway through the book, I had the thought that the Constance character resembles the appearance and actions of the kinds of characters Jessica Lange plays on American Horror story. As for the happy wandering doctor, the assistant and lodge daughter? The AHS actors I’ve chosen for the parts “sort of” fit, but come on, I had a narrative-thing going on, so I had to make them fit. There are other interesting and kooky characters in this book as well, but I couldn’t make them all fit into roles that are to be played by other notable AHS actors, cramming them it like puzzle pieces in the wrong spots (my Dad used to do this when working a jigsaw puzzle. It would piss my Mom off). AHS stories always have multiple plots. So does The Cliffhouse Haunting! AHS often has too many plot threads going on for its own good. The Cliffhouse Haunting has just the right amount. So perhaps its too good of a story for that famous cable show?

Thorne and Cross have been promoting audio versions of their books lately.  I came across their promotion for the audiobook copy of The Cliffhouse Haunting. Alas, it didn’t coax me to seek it out. It’s just that I’ve never done the audiobook thing. Hell, I have had Bluetooth for my last two cars and I never set it up. I guess for me, if it’s not music, then it doesn’t need to be transmitted to me electronically. BUT, the ad DID get me to purchase a copy to read on my Kindle app. And read it I did. So now, The Cliffhouse Haunting will join the other books by this haunting and hilarious duo that have made my page or reviews. These include The Ghosts of Ravencrest (the story has continued on, I have to catch up!), Five Nights at a Haunted Cabin, and book written by on half of the duo, Tamara Thorne, called Hunted. I do believe that The Cliffhouse Haunting is the first book by this duo.

The Cliffhouse Haunting is more of an entertaining book than it is scary. Yes, there’s the Blue Lady Ghost, and she’s creepy, but the word “entertaining” encompasses a larger umbrella of descriptors. “Scary” fits underneath its domain, as does “gory”, and “weird”. And “funny”, for which you can also remove the “ny” to make it a “fun” book, and that it is.

The authors take a divergent set of characters and flesh them out in a “fun” ghost story.  There’s the typical small-town sheriff; capable, modest, down-to earth. The lodge proprietors two married men with a college-aged daughter that helps her dads run the place. I’ve already mentioned Constance, the Happy Wandering Doc, and Hammerhead; but there is the mortician that is dominated by his overbearing wife. There is the lady who can’t control her obnoxious kids. Oh, I can’t forget the person that likes to vandalize buildings with penis-graffiti art.  Thorne and  Cross love to give their characters sexual idiosyncrasies. It just wouldn’t be a Thorne and Cross book without the characters that seek out different ways to satisfy themselves. Every once in a while, one of these characters will have a criminally deranged perversion, but damn it, these are horror novels! So, be afraid and even disgusted at those characters who kill and maim in the goal of fantasy fulfillment, but laugh at the ones that who have harmless albeit different hobbies. “The Chocolate Wander” – laugh, this is funny, it wanders where “chocolate” gathers! Well, I should say, laugh until someone gets hurt, because sometimes what starts as fun and weird ends rather badly.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I like this book. I guess that’s the point of a review, isn’t it, to state whether you like it or not? I could go into more detail about the Blue Lady and the hauntings how she possesses people, and  I could delve into the legends from the past and how the circumstances surrounding serial killings from one-hundred years ago are happening again in an eerily similar manner. Like I said, I COULD go into all that, but nah, read about that for yourself when you buy the book and read it OR listen to it. Take a journey through its pages. Happy Wandering!  

“Well ain’t that the Dickens?”

My answer – Uh, I dunno. This was an expression from the days of yore. Did it have anything to do with the famous English author Charles Dickens? Again I must say, “Uh, I dunno.”  But the book that is up for review, John Boyle’s This House is Haunted, is said to be written in “Dickensian prose”. Google Books and other sources make this claim.

The novel takes place during Dickensian times, that is for certain.  It is London circa 1867. Two of the main characters trudge out in the cold to attend a reading by the great author himself. So obviously, it is the author’s conscious attempt to establish a connection to this renowned author. Alas, I am not all that familiar with the writing style of Mr. Dickens, certainly not in a way that I can read a few lines of some latter author’s work and then declare, “AHA! I see the ghost of Charles haunting this prose!” No such ghost beckons me because I haven’t yet tasted the life of his characters and settings. No life, no ghosts. 

But I tell you this! (Interruptous Buttinski: No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn?) (Me: No, that is NOT what I was going to follow with. That is a line of Jim Morrison poetry that admittedly does follow “I tell you this”, but please, no reward will forgive YOU for wasting precious space on this page). I am familiar with the nineteenth century classic ghost story, and Google books draws this comparison to Boyle’s piece as well. I have delved into the works of Victorian era ghost story writers such as M.R James, Henry James and Sheridan Le Fanu and have found much to love about them. So I find myself quite pleased when modern writers such as Boyle recreate the style and settings in their tales of haunted houses of yore! Only a few reviews ago, I shared my experience reading Sarah Walter’s 2009 haunted house novel The Little Stranger, which takes place in England in the earlier part in of the twentieth century (Great book!) and I relished Susan Hill’s 1983 novel The Woman in Black, which takes place, uh, well, no specific time period is given, but they travel via horse and carriage, so, well, you know! Anyway, what is noteworthy is that these three authors capture not only the settings of these long-ago times but also the storytelling style. More so than these here modern days, the classic style thrills and chills with descriptive atmosphere that practically creates the ghosts that haunt the novel , confounds by purposely omitting a one-sided explanation for any ghostly phenomenon, beguiles with the stuff of psychological horror that we can all relate to, and elucidates with metaphorical allegories.

Now, I’m not sure Boyle’s This House is Haunted fulfills all of the characteristics of the classical style that I have mentioned at the end of the preceding paragraph, but it is a page-turner that makes me feel right at home in another time, place and style. The story flows smoothly. It is a simple story. Eliza Caine, is a young, unfortunate woman who leaves her home in London after the death of her father, her only close companion, and takes on a job as a governess for a young girl and boy in a house called Gaudlin Hall  in Norfolk. She learns too late that she is the fifth person to occupy that position in a relatively short time period. Three former governesses perished and one fled from Gaudlin Hall in fear for her life. Oh my, what ever is going on? Well, like the title of the book says, the house is haunted.

Instead of Charles Dickens, I am reminded of Henry James and his novel The Turn of the Screw. In that story, a woman takes on responsibility for the care of young Miles and Flora, two precocious children who appear to be haunted by the ghosts of a man and a woman, respectively. Guess what? The same thing happens here. It seems as if a female apparition is haunting young Isabella and a male ghost communicates with young Eustance.  Whatever is going on here could be deadly for poor Eliza. I must say there isn’t a whole lot of mystery in terms of the identity of these spirits, nor is there much doubt that there truly is a ghostly phenomenon. But at the book’s end, a couple of surprising things happen that cause the reader to reevaluate the nature of the spirits specifically and the overall haunting in general.

What I found most intriguing was Eliza Caine herself. Her demeanor, her backstory, her self-deprecating style that contradicts her strength of character and soft optimism. A well-written character I must say.

John Boyle may best be known for his novel The Boy in Striped Pajamas, later made into a movie. I have not read the book nor seen the movie. Maybe I should, now that I have read one of his “other” works as opposed to his “major” one.  Ya gotta do the major after the minor, isn’t that what they say? Or maybe I just made that quip up? Guess what – I did. Well it sounds cool, doesn’t it?  Anyway, This House is Haunted – an above average haunted house novel. Give it a try!