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.