Pups is Pups, 1930
Citing “strange, surrealist gags and bursts of anarchic violence,” Dave Kehr,
reviewing a new box set, taps in to some of the unusual appeal retained by the Hal-Roach-produced “Our Gang” shorts of the ’20s and ’30s. “Luis Bunuel might have approved of a film like
Lazy Days,” says Dave, and I agree—not just because of the whacked-out gag he cites. There’s also the film’s opening, which could just as well be titled
Farina Talks To Animals, in which the youngster addresses a disturbingly-conked-out rooster. Roosters, of course, being among Bunuel’s favorite “nightmare creatures.”
As it happens, My Lovely Wife grew up in the late ’70s-early ”80s, and the Gang—or the Little Rascals, as they were known in post-MGM/television incarnations—were not the local TV staples they were back in the ’60s. Hence, she has only vague impressions of Spanky and Alfalfa and knows Buckwheat largely as an Eddie Murphy character. Of Wheezer, Farina, Jackie, et.al., she knows naught. In an effort to bridge a profound gap in her knowledge of Western Civilization, I broke out the aforementioned new Little Rascals set and threw on the 1930 classic Pups Is Pups.
“This is like watching someone else’s fever dream,” she said about five minutes in. It’s true—early Gang shorts are weird.
It isn’t just the longueurs that occur during the dialogue bits, an understandable by-product of the child performers’ lack of training and the oft-improvised talk. And it’s not that Pups is Pups is plotless. It has a definite story line involving Farina’s desire to be a page at a local pet show, and the gang’s plan to win said pet show by invading it with their own barnyard critters. It’s just more like nobody involved much cares about the story, and the oft-near-enervated pace of the short demolishes any sense of linearity it might have had. Instead, the picture seems to proceed in a series of free associations and non-sequiturs, so that by the time a given running gag (say, the one about the little girl who keeps stepping out of her shack to jump in a mudhole) gets its payoff, it doesn’t register in a normal comedic way.
Then there’s the film’s setting, a Culver City location. Tell me this doesn’t look like a shot from Eraserhead:
While this shot, from the predictably disastrous pet show, would be right at home about two-thirds into Bunuel’s L’Age d’or:
The stuff is nuts, I tell you. I wonder what it would play like on Nyquil.
Glenn: For those of us hit too hard by Bushonomics to afford this lovely set (as well as almost any additional DVDs), will you tell us which disc “Pups Is Pups” is on so that we can obtain it from Netflix?
@Herman: That’d be Disc #2.
Thanks, Glenn.
The Spanky, Alfalfa gang shorts felt more conventional (still love ’em). But Our Gang 1.0 definitely could be unnerving.
Shot pictured is definitely out of Eraserhead, which disturbs me all the more. Robert Blake was a member of the rascals… Our Gang…Eraserhead… Lynch… Lost Highway… Blake
Now you’ve got me free associating.
Or Herzog … Herzog loves chickens, too. Farina is having his STROSZEK moment.
Great piece, Glenn. Did you notice that the establishing shot you quote from “Pups Is Pups” is actually a process shot with a matte painting? The Dickensian/Eraserhead vibe is something McGowan had to go out and create; it wasn’t lying around the streets of Culver City. How many two-reelers had effects like this?
Yes, that dividing line—and the perspective, a bit—give the effect away. You don’t notice it as much in the context of the moving picture—you get the odd starkness of it more than anything else.
I remember the controversy over these shorts being too racist to release … glad they’ve finally hit the store shelves so viewers can decide for themselves.
I grew up with the ‘Rascals’ … although by the time Froggy and the final generation of cast members came around even my young mind sensed the series had jumped the proverbial shark.
Some of my sharpest, fondest childhood memories came from these clunky bits of comedy.
Just for the record, at least in Los Angeles the “Our Gang” shorts were on all the time in the late 70s and early 80s. I used to watch them every Saturday morning.
An over-generalization, there, Brian—I’m prone to those. My wife’s from Missouri, and out there they did not show them much Rascals. Also, I seem to have fudged My Lovely Wife’s age—she was born in ’77, so to say she grew up in the late ’70s-early ’80s is to imbue her with a little more precociousness than plausible.