The Awful Tooth

This Hal Roach comedy short, The Awful Tooth, is the one hundred sixty-eighth entry in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the eightieth talkie. Alfalfa, along with Spike and Porky, need some coins to finally get some baseball equipment when Buckwheat reveals a dime he got from the Tooth Fairy. So Alf now has the idea to get all his teeth pulled out for some more money. When he tells this to the dentist, he knows it's an absurd idea and resolves to scare them all out of it. Okay, obviously, this is a pretty cruel situation for the gang to be in especially as it's meant to teach not only them but any kid watching this a lesson. And perhaps seeing the black character of Buckwheat suddenly go into prayer mode during some of this makes it an unflattering stereotype of his race for the period this was made in. But the absurdity of the whole thing still made me laugh much of the time now as it did when I first watched this as a kid, back in the late '70s. And seeing Jack Norton-who usually played a drunk-do an out-of-character role as the dentist is also good for some laughs. So on that note, The Awful Tooth wasn't too bad for an Our Gang short. P.S. This was Nate Watt's second and final Our Gang short as director. He'd make some undistinguished features and TV shows before dying on May 26, 1968.