Night 'n' Gales (1937) User Reviews

Decent...and a bit sadistic!

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 27 January 2012]

Alfalfa, Spanky, Porky and Buckwheat are over at Darla's house singing for her parents. Her mother is thrilled--Dad (the sane one) thinks it's dreadful. Unfortunately for Dad, it's raining so hard that the boys are asked to stay the night. And, not surprisingly, they make a mess and drive Dad crazy.

A low-point of the short is Buckwheat and his stomachache. Even for the Buckster, this is REALLY bad acting. You wonder why the director didn't try harder to get a better job of acting here. High-points are watching Darla's dad (Johnny Arthur) getting tortured and there is very little singing in this one (unlike many in these later Our Gang shorts)! The bear scene, while funny was also kind of dumb--making it a bit good, a bit bad. On balance, it's an okay short--worth watching but just not up to the standards of the heyday of the series from 1930-33.

By the way, when Alfalfa hits the man in the face with a shoe, he appears to really be doing it--and quite hard. From what I read about Alfalfa Switzer, he probably did this deliberately. It made for a great scene but must have hurt!

Natural camaraderie

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 28 July 2017]

NIGHT 'N' GALES is another fun short for the Our Gang team. In this one, they spend the night at Darla's house and end up wreaking havoc by preventing Darla's father from getting a good night's sleep. The usual hijinks ensue, but what shines here is the natural camaraderie between the children, something that can't be faked.

"Where are you going to get a pocupine . . . "

[pixrox1 · 8/10 · 5 May 2018]

" . . . THIS time of night?!" one of the "Little Rascals" asks 'Mr. Hood" during an "Our Gang" 1930s episode called NIGHT 'N' GALES. Today's Millennials often do not realize how difficult it actually was to get a porcupine, badger, or wolverine during the wee hours of the morning 80 or 90 years ago. Nowadays partying youngsters think nothing of whipping their cell out a couple hours before down to order a gazelle or platypus from Prime, expecting that a drone will drop it off within 15 minutes (or it will be free). However, hard as this might be for them to fathom, as recently as the 1900s no one had access to cell phones or drones. Making a phone call involved dropping actual coins into a "public" land-line telephone machine with a rotary dial (and these ancient contraptions were about as sanitary as a "public" toilet). Plus, if it was 3 or 4 AM, late night porcupine customers would need to dial a store in a different time zone half the World away (which would require about two kegs of coins!). Since modern "just in time" inventory practices were NOT very widespread in Yesteryear, it would likely take MONTHS (not mere minutes) for your porcupine to arrive. Therefore, NIGHT 'N' GALES should make viewers thank their lucky stars to be living in Today's up-to-date World!

Childhood Memories

[Single-Black-Male · 26 February 2003]

I remember watching this during my secondary school career. Despite the fact that this was 50 years old in the 1980's, set in America, and had a stereotyped character called 'Buckwheat', it was still entertaining and funny to watch. I think every child should be introduced to the 'Little Rascals'.

Night 'n' Gales was aided immeasurably by Johnny Arthur for laughs in this Our Gang entry

[tavm · 9/10 · 28 December 2014]

This Hal Roach comedy short, Night 'n' Gales, is the one hundred fifty-seventh entry in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the sixty-ninth talkie. At night, The Four Nitengales "entertain" the Hood family with their rendition of "Home, Sweet Home" endlessly. Darla and her mother seemed entertained but her father (Johnny Arthur) and little sibling Junior (Gary Jasgur in his first OG appearance) are definitely not! Eventually, Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and Porky decide to go home but it's raining so instead, they're invited to stay to the consternation of the father! I'll stop there and just say this was another hilarious outing for the gang, added immensely in entertainment value by Johnny Arthur's performance, not surprising since he was as hilarious when previously portraying Spanky's father in Anniversary Trouble. Oh, and I loved the use of Nathaniel Shilkret's score of "Funny and Mysterious"-which I previously heard in Laurel & Hardy's Way Out West-here. So on that note, I highly recommend Night 'n' Gales.

One of the Gang

[tedg · 6 February 2006]

So many of our old movies have elements that grate against racial sensitivities. So when we encounter some that don't, it is worth noting.

The general setup of the gang is that there a couple girls, and a collection of boy types. All of these boys are designed to have comic characteristics, and over a variety of episodes each is made fun of equally. One of these boys is Buckwheat, a black boy.

He's just a member of the gang. In this episode, the four core boys are singing at Darla's house until late. So they have to stay. All four (wearing Darla's extra nightgowns) crowd into the bed with Darla's dad. Let this sink in a minute: a black kid in this situation with no notice at all of his race. In 1937!

Two minor events in this episode could be considered stereotypical. Buckwheat is the one who's scared of the dark. And when they open the refrigerator and discover watermelon, he says "I like that." But he takes a couple bites and it is the fat kid, Porky that eats it all. And when the real scare happens (the dad in a bear rug) all the kids are equally bugeyed.

At the very end, the boys leave to go home. The last word is that the dad is crazy and a very strange word, he's "pixelated." That and the racial enlightenment made me think this was a modern film.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.