Detective Alfalfa and his assistants Buckwheat and Porky try to solve a missing-candy case but find themselves in an amusement park haunted house.Detective Alfalfa and his assistants Buckwheat and Porky try to solve a missing-candy case but find themselves in an amusement park haunted house.Detective Alfalfa and his assistants Buckwheat and Porky try to solve a missing-candy case but find themselves in an amusement park haunted house.
Photos
Darla Hood
- Darla
- (as Our Gang)
Eugene 'Porky' Lee
- Porky, alias X-6
- (as Our Gang)
Carl 'Alfalfa' Switzer
- Alfalfa, alias X-10
- (as Our Gang)
Billie 'Buckwheat' Thomas
- Buckwheat, alias X-6-1
- (as Our Gang)
- …
Gary Jasgur
- Junior
- (as Our Gang)
Leonard 'Percy' Landy
- Percy
- (as Our Gang)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- ConnectionsFeatured in Elvis Costello: Watching the Detectives (1977)
Featured review
Hide and Shriek would be the final Our Gang comedy to come from the Lot of Fun
This Hal Roach comedy short, Hide and Shriek, is the one hundred sixty-ninth entry in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the eighty-first talkie. It's also the very last one in the series produced by Hal Roach Studios as distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would take over production with the next one. Alfalfa is running a detective agency with Porky and Buckwheat as his assistants. Darla is their client who's looking for her missing candy. Percy and Junior are the suspects and are being followed. Unfortunately, Alf, Bucky, and Pork end up in a haunted sideshow at an amusement park...This was quite a funny entry to end Hal Roach's run as the producer of the Our Gang series at his studio. It would also be the last time LeRoy Shield's theme of "Good Old Days" would begin and end an ep of the series, not to mention any of his or Marvin Hatley's scores used as background. Also, no more "Oelze gag", named after longtime Roach staffer Charley Oelze who'd continue at the studio until his retirement. So on that note, Hide and Shriek was a nice way for Our Gang to say goodbye to all those left behind I just mentioned.
As for why things happened the way they did. Well, by this time double features were crowding out short subjects in theatres not owned by major studios and two years previous, Hal Roach had graduated Laurel & Hardy to features, let go of Charley Chase who went to Columbia to continue starring in shorts as well as direct the studio's other stars of such like The Three Stooges, and had failed to graduate Our Gang to features when General Spanky tanked and reduced the series shorts to just one-reel to cut costs. M-G-M had wanted these shorts to continue past this period but Roach felt they weren't doing enough publicity for the features he made for them like his hit Topper. Actually, Metro may have had a reason for doing what they did: they weren't thrilled by the possibility of Roach making a deal with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's son Vittorio for co-productions between his country and America. It didn't go through but it may have contributed to Hal abruptly severing ties with the studio-He had one more year of commitment of Our Gang for them and had one more Laurel & Hardy feature, Block-Heads, ready for release by them-to making a more lucrative deal with United Artists. With that, he sold the Our Gang series-including name, players, and some of the writing crew, as well as director Gordon Douglas' services for at least two films-to his now-former distributor. It took awhile, but the loss would be felt as the years went on...
As for why things happened the way they did. Well, by this time double features were crowding out short subjects in theatres not owned by major studios and two years previous, Hal Roach had graduated Laurel & Hardy to features, let go of Charley Chase who went to Columbia to continue starring in shorts as well as direct the studio's other stars of such like The Three Stooges, and had failed to graduate Our Gang to features when General Spanky tanked and reduced the series shorts to just one-reel to cut costs. M-G-M had wanted these shorts to continue past this period but Roach felt they weren't doing enough publicity for the features he made for them like his hit Topper. Actually, Metro may have had a reason for doing what they did: they weren't thrilled by the possibility of Roach making a deal with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's son Vittorio for co-productions between his country and America. It didn't go through but it may have contributed to Hal abruptly severing ties with the studio-He had one more year of commitment of Our Gang for them and had one more Laurel & Hardy feature, Block-Heads, ready for release by them-to making a more lucrative deal with United Artists. With that, he sold the Our Gang series-including name, players, and some of the writing crew, as well as director Gordon Douglas' services for at least two films-to his now-former distributor. It took awhile, but the loss would be felt as the years went on...
helpful•00
- tavm
- Jan 4, 2015
Details
- Runtime10 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content