Good movie but grossly overrated

An Exercise In Nonsense

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A cute film where Bela Lugosi meets The East Side Kids(Bowery Boys). The movie is fun to watch if you like the older comedy-horror films. I did not bust-a-gut laughing but I did find the film enjoyable - refreshing.The Boys end up in a boys camp, peewee is shot, there is a murderer on the loose, a strange creepy old house, some humor and, of course, Bela Lugosi. This really is a good family style horror film - good to watch with the kids.Lugosi has much better films than this one but the movie is a must for Lugosi fans - it's a simple, lighthearted comedy-horror film.Make it a double feature with Ghosts on the Loose (1943)! 6.5/10

SPOOKS RUN WILD (Monogram, 1941), directed by Phil Rosen, the seventh in the "East Side Kids" series, is probably best known due to its presence of top-billed Bela Lugosi, the master of horror, whose role as Dracula (Universal, 1931) has made his legendary. Although routinely done on a limited scale, and being a far cry from similar themes produced over at Universal, this entry gets by for what it is - a comedic horror mystery.The story begins briefly in the tenement district of New York where the East Side Kids, consisting of Danny (Bobby Jordan), Glimpy (Huntz Hall), Skinny (Bobby Stone), Pee Wee (David Gorcey), Scruno (Sammy Morrison) and its leader, Muggs Maginnis (Leo Gorcey), labeled underprivileged, being escorted by the police into a bus headed to the country for summer camp, as arranged by Jeff Dixon (Dave O'Brien). Dixon, a young man studying to become a lawyer, has a rough job ahead of him looking over these kids while working on his thesis. As the bus makes a stop in a small town called Hillside, the boys enter a sweet shop where Muggs takes an interest in a counter girl named Margie (Rosemary Partia). As Muggs arranges a meeting time with her, an announcement is heard over the radio warning residents to be aware of a "Monster Killer" on the loose. In the meantime, a mysterious man, Nardo (Bela Lugosi) and his dwarf assistant, Luigi (Angelo Rossitto) drive through town in a trailer full of coffins heading for the Billings Estate, which has been unoccupied for ten years. Later that evening, Muggs, sneaking out of camp to keep his date with Margie, is followed by his friends. Taking a short cut through the cemetery, Pee Wee is shot by a caretaker. Injured, the boys take him to a nearby mansion on top of the hill where Nardo offers his assistance by giving Pee-Wee a sedative and a room to rest for the night. As overnight guests, the East Side Kids encounter strange happenings, including Pee Wee roaming about in a zombie-like trance. As Linda Mason (Dorothy Short), Jeff's girlfriend and the camp nurse, goes out to search for the missing boys in the dead of night, she soon encounters a Doctor Von Grosch (Dennis Moore) for assistance.As with most film series placing its central characters in horror genre cycle or in a residence believed to be haunted, SPOOKS RUN WILD offers nothing new considering how the East Side Kids were involved in similar situations earlier in its second entry, THE GHOST CREEPS, re-titled BOYS OF THE CITY (1940). SPOOKS RUN WILD benefits greatly with Lugosi aboard dressed mostly in black attire as if he were Count Dracula. At one point he's addressed by Muggs as "Mr. Horror Man." There's the usual antics provided by kids ranging black member Scruno's encounter with a white spider; Muggs nearly getting trapped inside a coffin; to Glimpy's reply to Danny of having "gone to night school" as his reasoning as to how he can read in the dark, a reply repeated by Huntz Hall playing Sach to Leo Gorcey's Slip in THE BOWERY BOYS MEET THE MONSTERS (1954). Containing much of the familiar Monogram and P.R.C. stock underscoring, SPOOKS RUN WILD, set mostly in the dark of night with the gang carrying lighted candle plates, makes way to some fine suspense with laughs. Actually not bad of this type, with an interesting conclusion rounding up its story.Distributed on home video in the 1980s, later available on DVD as companion piece to GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE (1943), the second and last East Side Kids comedy featuring Bela Lugosi; SPOOKS RUN WILD has turned up on occasion on Turner Classic Movies (with re-issue Astor Pictures Studio logo in place of Monogram) where it premiered in May 2004. Next in the series, MR. WISE GUY (1942)(**).

(Some Spoilers) The East Side kids are at it again this time out of their element, Manhattan's lower East Side, and in unfamiliar territory a haunted house in upstate New York. Trying to get the boys to straighten themselves out PAL lawyer Jeff Dixon, Dave O'Brien, has them enrolled in a camp for the summer to learn the finer things in life like sunshine fresh air and unharmonized milk.Lead by their fearless and though talking leader Muggs, Leo Grocey, the East Side Kids skip camp and end up being locked up in this creepy and electricity deprived haunted house. It's there where their hounded by this "Monster Killer" who's terrorizing the local population with three murders already under his belt. Muggs together with Danny, Bobby Jordan, and Skimpy, Hurtz Hall, at first try to help fellow gang member Peewee, David Grocey, who was shot, by a night watchman, as he walked through the cemetery near the haunted house. Joined by both Scruno and Skinny, Ernest Morrison & Donald Hines, Muggs tries to get the badly injured Peewee help only to run into the master of the house the mysterious Nardo, Bela Lugosi, and his two foot eleven inch assistant Luigi, Angelo Russitto.****SPOILERS**** Were ,and the East Side Kids, are kept in the dark to who this "Monster Killer" really is until the very end of the movie when, it becomes obvious to everyone watching, his secret identity is finally revealed. The movie itself,in order to keep he cost down, is so lax in the lighting department that most of the time you can't make out what's happening in it! All this just about cancels out the slap stick action scenes in the movie that the zany East Side Kids are noted for. The great Bela Lugosi, as Nordo, is about the only reason to watch "Spook's Run Wild" in that like in all the bargain basement films that he was in, during the last fifteen years of his life, Lugosi raise the grad Z-movie up a few notches. It's to his credit that Lugosie doesn't, like everyone else in the movie, takes himself seriously. This has him comes across more of a comedian in making fun of himself then the villain you would have expected Bela Lugosi to be in the film. As for Lugosi, or Nordo's, sidekick Luigi he's so small and hard t follow, in the dark, that at times he looks like a talking, and moving, head without a body attached to it! There's also Dave O'Brien, as Jeff Dixon, who's reunited in the movie with his wife Dorothy Short who plays nurse Linda Mason. The two are best remembered as the ill fated and tragic young couple in that timeless 1938 anti-pot/marijuana classic "Reefer Madness". There's also in the soundtrack of "Spooks Run Wild" the theme song, or instrumental arrangement , of Lugosi's 1940 mad scientist and horror classic "The Devil Bat" where he played a deranged and vindictive perfume and mens cologne annalist.

Although the Bowery Boys are (say it isn't true!) starting to grow on me, and I had somewhat high hopes for Spooks Run Wild, because you never know what will happen when Bela Lugosi is on the scene. Unfortunately the 'Running Wild' portion of the title can be aptly used to describe the movie, because this just goes all over the place, and uses weak excuses to justify it's actions. When the boys are on their way to Juvvie camp for getting into trouble, they stop in a town overnight. Also happening to be in this town are a mysterious stranger (Lugosi) and his, uh, midget friend, who everyone is convinced is some sort of monster killer but don't bother to do anything about it. The kids are stuck in Lugosi's creepy house, and basically silly situation after silly situation transpires, without any logic or reasoning building up to a ridiculous conclusion that, if you were casually paying attention, you could have easily picked up from the start.