The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry and Shemp) run the Super Slueth Detective Agency (yes, the typo is part of the company’s name) and their specialty is “Divorce Evidence Manufactured to Your Order.” They are hired to find a missing young woman and their strategy is to canvas the area where she disappeared by disguising themselves as door-to-door pie salesmen handing out free samples. When they hear her scream from a seemingly abandoned house, they gain entrance and find they are in the lair of the crazed scientist Dr. Jekyll, who with his fearsome henchman Mr. Hyde are planning to transplant the young woman’s brain into a gorilla that they are keeping in a cage.
In some ways, “Spooks!” is typical of the Stooges’ haunted house romps as the zany trio race about in terror and barely escape attempts on their life, pausing only to knock each other about. But the film’s notability involves the production being shot in 3D, which was briefly the Hollywood craze. Thus, much of the slapstick violence is staged twice, once with something being thrust directly into the viewer’s focus – a knife, a pitchfork, Moe’s extended fingers for an eye poke, and plenty of pies – and again with the actual assault and after-effect. I’ve never seen “Spooks!” in its original 3D format, so I cannot comment on the visual gimmick’s effectiveness. (The trio only made one other 3D film, the abysmal “Pardon My Backfire” in 1954.)
Still, “Spooks!” is a wonderfully silly distraction and it shines with a few offbeat touches, most notably a bat with Shemp’s face and the head of a bizarre canine with bat ears that comes to life even though it is mounted on a wall. Phil Van Zandt, sporting thick eyeglasses and a demonic goatee, is very funny as the mad doctor while Tom Kennedy is a fine thug. And how can you not love a film where a gorilla escapes from its cage and starts to throw pies?
The real treat here is lovely Norma Randall, who plays the distressed damsel barely rescued by the Stooges. She was a Columbia Pictures starlet who seemed to be ready for a film career – after “Spooks!’ was filmed, she was honored as one of 10 “Stars of Tomorrow” at the American Legion Hollywood Post 43 and was also named queen of the California International Flower Show. Sadly, “Spooks!’ was her only credited role – Columbia put her in a handful of uncredited bit parts before dropping her from its roster in 1954. She has no recorded film credits after her year at the studio and her whereabouts after her brief fling in the movies is unknown.