Alfalfa's Aunt

This M-G-M comedy short, Alfalfa's Aunt, is the one hundred seventy-sixth entry in the "Our Gang" series and the eighty-eighth talkie. Penelope (Marie Blake) is the title character in this short. She's visiting the Switzer household to the consternation of the father who's not thrilled about her visit. She had previously been an aspiring sculptor that this dad had to pose half-naked for so that's one reason he doesn't like her. This time, though, she's practicing mystery writing using the actual family name in the manuscript. Alf inadvertently gets a hold of a page-written in the first person-that mentions the planned murder of the nephew and gets scared of his supposed favorite relative. So when he tells the rest of the gang, they do all what they can to rid the house of sharp and poisonous objects...This was one of the funniest of the early M-G-M entries of the Our Gang series with great atmospherics courtesy of director George Sidney and cinematographer Jackson Rose. And Ms. Blake is suitably eccentric enough in the title role. So on that note, I highly recommend Alfalfa's Aunt.