The Rummy

Well, some of the original Lonesome Lukes are pretty awful, and a couple of the Stan Laurel one-reelers are pretty bad too -- there's one in which the humor consists of everyone being Irish and bashing each other with bricks. But once you get past the initial gag in this movie, which is a typical piece of Del Lord destroying automobiles amusingly, this, the nominal last of the Taxi Boys series has Billy Gilbert going to a taxidermy shop -- he doesn't know the difference -- and getting involved with a twitchy Ben Blue in a scare-the-comics routine. Billy does some of his sneezing routine, but it doesn't look like they intended it for more than filling out a film that was running desperately short.

Bad story line, bad continuity and even the special effects are fairly cheesy and obvious. It looks like they had already canceled the series before they made this one of scraps.

I've seen several Taxi Boys shorts with Ben Blue and Billy Gilbert. For the most part, they are Hal Roach's copy of another one of their teams, Laurel & Hardy--with them playing similar roles to Stan and Ollie. However, in this one, the guys play different roles and don't even act together until about halfway through the film. Here Gilbert plays a dumb guy with a strong German accent and Ben Blue plays the most annoying Burlesque-style comic I have ever seen. So, while their other films aren't great, this one is just plain bad at times...thanks mostly to Blue.

The film begins with Gilbert destroying a cab and getting fired from his taxi job. Soon he sees a sign for a job for a taxidermist and thinks it's advertising for taxi drivers. Oddly, he is able to get the job has no idea what to do. Soon a truly moronic customer with a pet flea (Blue) enters the film...and the audience soon hates him. His manners are WAY over-exaggerated and he comes on VERY strong--sort of like grafting Huntz Hall with Ed Wynn...and then giving this abomination crack! He's pushy and comes on strong...way too strong.

Eventually the two get involved in some sort of haunted house--why, I don't really know. What happened to the original plot and what happened to them as the Taxi Boys?! By this point, the film ended and I was left wondering WHAT the heck I'd just seen. Frankly, I don't care...and have no interest in seeing it again.

Rummy, The (1933)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Another poor entry in the "Taxi Boys" series has Billy Gilbert being fired from his taxi job so he goes to apply for another not knowing it's really a taxidermy position. Soon Ben Blue comes in to have his flea stuffed and things don't get much better. This is an incredibly unfunny and rather painful comedy that has very little going for it. The first half of the movie is downright horrid as we get about five-minutes of Blue doing tricks with his flea, which is just downright annoying and only gets worse. The second half picks up slightly as the film turns into a horror-comedy as we get a couple good gags like a scene where a skull lands on a cat. As you can guess by the title, this was clearly meant as a somewhat spoof of the Boris Karloff film THE MUMMY and the funny thing is that the mummy here is in more of the film than the one in the Universal flick. Going into this series I had heard some very negative things about Blue but up to this point I had find him mildly entertaining but his performance here is downright awful. He really does come off as someone on crack because his facial gestures, body movements and overall acting style is so out of control you can't help but be put off by everything he's doing. Blue comes across very annoying and makes the film extremely hard to sit through. Gilbert doesn't get too much to work with but at least you can tell he's trying.