'His Royal Slyness' at 100 years

His Royal Slyness (1920)
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Gaylord Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Harry Pollard, Marie Mosquini, Noah Young, Gus Leonard, and Helen Gilmore
Director: Hal Roach
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A door-to-door salesman (Harold Lloyd) with an uncanny resemblance to the crown prince of a small European nation (Gaylord Lloyd) is convinced to take his place after the prince decides he'd rather stay in America with his sexy girlfriend (Mosquini) than return home for an arranged marriage with the princess of a neighboring kingdom (Davis).

"His Royal Slyness" is a fun twist on the old "Prince and the Pauper"-type tale, as well as a spoof of the Communist revolution. It's a supremely silly film without a single straight-man in sight. Just about every character is goofy, horny, dimwitted, or some combination of the those. The only character who has the slightest bit of class and integrity in the film is the princess played by Mildred Davis... and that might just be because there wasn't time for her to reveal another side to her.

The film is in many ways a caricature of the peasant/worker revolution that was unfolding in Russia when it was made, with its cartoonish nobles and peasants, but it's also a great vehicle for Lloyd's standard womanizing character. One of the film's funniest running gags involves him taking down phone numbers in his Little Black Book for every woman he meets, including that of the austere queen to whose daughter he is to be married. (On a perhaps purely personal level, borne from my years developing fictional settings for roleplaying games, I was fascinated by the fact that the royal court of Thermosa exclusively employed young women instead of boys as pages. I found myself wondering what the greater society in that nation might be like as a result. Of course, the real reason for why producer/director Hal Roach made this choice was to have plenty of women in short skirts wandering around the scenes... but I still wonder what went on in Thermosa to make it so different from the norm.)

As I post these comments, it's exactly 100 years since "His Royal Slyness" was first seen by audiences in movie theatrers. Considering that, it's obvious to wonder if it's still worth seeing today... and my answer is an emphatic YES! The humor in this fast-paced comedy has held up extremely well, and the political undertones may resonate a little differently than they did in 1920, but they still feel fresh and relevant--which may be a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the 21st Century.

But don't just take my word for it! You can watch the movie below, embedded here in this very post, and make up your own mind.

'Haunted Spooks' is among Lloyd's best

Haunted Spooks (1920)
Starring: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Ernest Morrison, Blue Washington, Marie Benson, and Wallace Howe
Directors: Alf Goulding and Hal Roach
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

After she inherits the entirety of her uncle's estate Mildred Hillary (Davis), is swiftly married to a young man with nothing to lose (Lloyd), because the will states she must live in the main house with her husband for a year or everything goes to her other uncle (Howe). Meanwhile, said other uncle comes up with a scheme to scare the newlyweds off the property by making them think the house is haunted.

I sat down to watch "Haunted Spooks" with some trepidation--given its age and its title, I feared I may be in for a movie that hadn't aged well. Turns out, my fears were unfounded. While the film does feature "superstitious negroes", they are no more or less rediculous than the white characters who run around the old house while panicking after being confronted by the fake ghosts. Further, the black butler (played by Blue Washington) gets to redeem himself by throwing the greedy hoaxers by throwing them out of the house as the movie is coming to an end (come on, that's not a spoiler... does anyone watching this film a century later really think there was ever any chance the bad guys would be successful?) while our skeptic hero, Harold Lloyd, has one last moment of panic when it appears the house really might be haunted after all.

As for the rest of the movie, everything flows smoothly, and while the team here comes dangerously close to making the same mistakes that sank "Captain Kidd's Kids" (1919). Like "Captain Kidd's Kids", this film takes a long time getting to the spooks we're promised in the title and on the poster; the film is more than half over before Harold and his new bride arrive at the supposedly haunted house. However, unlike "Captain Kidd's Kids", the long journey to the pay-off is one that we share with likable and rediculous characters, so it's a fun ride all the way. (In the other film, there was little to nothing to like about the lead characters.)

The ending to this film is also one of the most satisfying of any of the ones to a Harold Lloyd film I've seen so far. Often, even when it's a generally happy ending for most of the characters in the film, they've involved Harold running for the hills to escape disaster, or him going off to wallow in self-pitiying misery. Here, we get a happy ending all around (except for those dastardly relatives who were trying to steal Mildred's inheritence), and the writers even get in one final joke that I found to be among the funniest in the whole picture.

There's an excellent version of "Haunted Spooks" that can be watched on YouTube. There are a few missing frames here and there, but the image is constently clear and the music isn't half-bad. I've embedded it below, so you can take a few minutes out of your day to enjoy yourself right now! (I should note that fans of romances and Scooby-Doo cartoons will probably like this alot: The first half of the film is a highly amusing send-up of common gothic romance tropes while the second half could well be a Scooby-Doo plotline.)