The Little Rascals
Collection (Koch)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: B- Shorts: B-
One of the most enduring of all Hollywood Icons has fallen
on tough times and is due for a comeback.
The Little Rascals Collection offers a cross-section of the
original Our Gang series, with eleven shorts that date back to the
silent era. They fill the first four of
the five DVDs in this set and are:
1) Dogs Of
War (with Harold Lloyd)
2) Derby
Days
3) Stage
Fright
4) Sundown
Ltd.
5) The
Pirates
6) Mary –
Queen Of Tots
7) The
Fourth Alarm
8) School’s
Out
9) Bear
Shooter
10) Our Gang Follies Of 1938
11) Waldo’s Last Stand
The first seven, coming from the original Hal Roach
Studios, are from the silent era. They
were hits in the 1920s and are little seen.
The remaining are the sound shorts that M-G-M released and were
syndicated often in the early days of TV into the 1970s, where they received
consistently high ratings for whatever stations were smart enough to license
them. At first, as in the first three
shorts, all Roach and company had to do was push the novelty that there were a
group of kids in funny live-action short films. Towards the end, the visual gangs and wacky set pieces that
visually distinguished them from all other child acts in the business
developed.
Besides the famous signs with their misspellings and
child-like writing, despite the fact that these were kids suffering through the
depression, they managed to hold rather elaborate stage shows with musical
numbers, launch money-making schemes, find all kinds of clothing and build
terrific racing vehicles from scratch.
They were not thieves either, and it was not until the animated Fat
Albert arrived in the 1970s that any other group of economically deprived
kids were so innovative with having so little.
By the sound shorts, the Gang happened to be at the
wealthiest film studio in the Classical Hollywood Era, so it is no surprise
these kinds of “bursts of creativity” happened out of nowhere. Even now, it is remarkable how hilarious and
smart these programs are. It would be fair
to say that they are one of the most successful shorts series in cinema
history. This box shows the growth of
the original gang in what is now too commonly labeled a franchise, but Roach
and later producer Robert McGowan kept these as entertaining and fun as
possible. The knack for casting in the
series is one of the most remarkable to this day, as reinforced and proved by
the horrible, degrading and even sexualized kids of the 1994 Little Rascals
feature film that had more than a few parents walking out of director Penelope
Spheeris’ all-time disaster. Sadly,
that killed any chance of a much-needed revival, even of the originals found on
this set. The only think that authentically
kept the Gang alive was Eddie Murphy’s great series of skits playing an old
Buckwheat on Saturday Night Live.
Fortunately, many of the shows have been issued on DVD and
this is the most wide-ranging set we have seen yet. All shot in black and white, the quality is average and all the
prints show their age, but they are all watchable. As for sound, the silent shorts all have music tracks, one of
which sounds like a new music recording.
The sound shorts sound fairly good for their age, but restoration of the
entire series is needed and we can only hope later M-G-M shorts now held by
Warner Bros. have been as saved as other gems in the studio library. All the encoding is Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono.
That extends to the bonus programs on DVD 5, which
includes an Our Gang Reunion (about six minutes long) and new
documentary called Kid Stuff: Inside Hollywood’s Child Stars. Both are nice bonuses that enhance the
set. The former is a visit with the
earliest stars of the silent shorts, which should make die hard fans pleased,
while the latter (about an hour in length) covers a wide range of child stars
from the Classical Hollywood era. There
is just enough of Our Gang in it to justify its inclusion. All that makes this one of most distinct Little
Rascals DVD releases to date.
- Nicholas Sheffo
