arfdawg-1 The Plot.The boys are sent to a mountain camp. Stranded in a small rural town, they hear about a "monster killer" roaming the countryside. At night, they sneak out. Peewee is shot by a grave-digger, and they are forced to seek aid at an old mansion. The owner of the mansion (Lugosi), insists that the boys spend the night. After seeing PeeWee walk around the house in a trance, the boys decide that the man turned him into a zombie. They gang up on him and tie him up. The nurse at the boys camp (Dorothy Short) sets out to find the missing boys with Von Grosch (Dennis Moore), who has come to rid the town of the killer- or has he? As a kid when this series ran on local TV, I LOVED the boys. But now as an adult...man are these films dated and unfunny.I especially remember liking this movie when I was 12. It's really not a very good movie. Lugosi goes trampling around over acting as if he's in an Ed Wood movie. He even wears the Dracula cape!It all gets old real quick. For a sixty minute movie, it is tedious and feels twice as long.The Moral? You can't go back.

bkoganbing Would anyone have believed that an Academy Award would be in the future for one of the participants in Spooks Run Wild back in 1941? I think one would have been told to get a cranial examination. Yet Carl Foreman who wrote the screenplay would be getting one eleven years later for High Noon. Unfortunately blacklist was also in his future.Academy Award winners didn't usually work at Monogram Pictures, but one starts to learn the trade somewhere in the film business. In this case it's with The Bowery Boys. They've been sent in the charge of Dave O'Brien and Dorothy Short to a summer camp. The boys go wandering off and come upon a haunted house occupied by Bela Lugosi.The usual Bowery Boy monkeyshines are present throughout. When the boys go wandering off however, we're informed that a serial killer is also loose in the area. It's from Monogram so don't expect all that much. Still it's interesting to see the genesis of High Noon?

classicsoncall For a while I thought "Spooks Run Wild" and "Ghosts on the Loose" were the same film, both featuring The East Side Kids teaming up with Bela Lugosi. This, the earlier of the two movies is heavier on the haunted house atmospherics which the East Siders use to fire off their gags and one liners. Lugosi comes complete with his Count Dracula outfit and midget sidekick Angelo Rossitto; the long view of his mountaintop retreat is reminiscent of the sinister house in "Psycho".What's kind of neat about the story as it progresses is that the boys all take turns teaming up with each other as they search for their injured buddy Peewee (David Gorcey) in the huge Billings Estate. Peewee seems to be in a trance after being treated by Nardo (Lugosi), so his pals connect Nardo to the 'monster killer' they heard about on the radio on the way to camp. In between the sound and sight gags, Scruno (Sunshine Sammy Morrison) has some fun with the stereotyped scaredy cat role he's given as the black member of the East Siders - "I'm so scared I'm turnin' white now"; and later - "A white spider, that must have been the ghost of the black widow!" It all comes across as pretty harmless, but done today, the political correctness police would be all over it.There's a line Lugosi speaks in the film that reminded me of his performance in 1931's "Dracula". In that earlier film, a wolf howls in the distance and Dracula says to Renfield - "Listen to them... children of the night, what music they make." Under similar circumstances in "Spooks", while walking through the Hillside Cemetery, he remarks - "City of the dead. Do they too hear the howling of the fighting dogs?" I wonder if that line was intended as a tribute to the horror classic.From the outset, I had the idea that the old switcheroo would take Lugosi off the hook as the monster killer; indeed it turned out to be the spooky Dr. Von Grosch (Dennis Moore) who almost claimed Linda Mason (Dorothy Short) from the camp as his latest victim. Lugosi's convincing along the way though, even getting to use a version of that famous stare down from "Dracula" and "White Zombie".The diminutive Rossitto appeared with Lugosi a couple more times in pictures, in 1942's "The Corpse Vanishes", and 1947's "Scared to Death". He doesn't have a lot to do in any of the stories, in fact he doesn't even speak in this one, but his presence adds just a slight dash of bizarreness to the proceedings.At just over an hour in length, "Spooks Run Wild" is a fun diversion, but don't expect a tight script or much in the way of story development. It's all in the gags, one liners and Leo Gorcey's malapropisms. If you're putting together your list of films for Halloween fright night, this would be a good one to start off with.

MARIO GAUCI I've often joked in the past about some people's boundless (my words) affection for the later incarnations of The Dead End Kids but, actually, this and GHOST ON THE LOOSE (1943) are my first encounters with them. So, what's the verdict, then? Simple: their shtick is more tolerable when taken in smaller doses as was the case in DEAD END (1937) and ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938).This is instantly forgettable stuff and I can't see it having much rewatchability value in the future...especially since Bela Lugosi turns out to be a good guy after all! Didn't he learn his lesson with MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935)?