Even those with a high tolerance for 1940s rubbish films will have a hard time getting through "Crazy Knights" (aka "Ghost Crazy"). It was poverty-row studio Monogram's attempt to create a viable comedy team in the wake of the success of Abbott and Costello, and the continuing popularity of The Three Stooges. The idea was to team the ubiquitous Billy Gilbert with Shemp Howard (who at the time was between his stints with the Stooges) and Lennie-like boxer Maxie Rosenbloom. The three don't act as a trio; Gilbert (who is costumed exactly like Oliver Hardy) and Shemp work as a team, and Rosenbloom joins in about half-way through. The rest of the cast in this haunted house "comedy" is largely unknown, save for John "Perry White" Hamilton, who at this point in his career was bouncing back and forth between major and minor studios. Oh, and since this is a 1940s scare farce, there's also a gorilla. Gilbert--who acts as both slap-happy straight man and overacting, spluttering comic--Howard--who plays it with a tough guy edge--and Rosenbloom pull out every stop to try and get a laugh, but the script (the fault of Tim Ryan, who also plays the detective), the premise, and the utter cheapness of the film defeats them all. Seen today, the picture is a time capsule of the kind of no-budget, no-talent movie-making that existed during the Golden Age, but it's awfully hard to imagine audiences so starved for entertainment that they'd actually pay to see this.
