Hotel a la Swing

Hotel a la Swing (1937)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Mildly entertaining two-reeler from Warner has a traveling music show losing their job so when they can't pay the hotel tab they make a deal to work it off. The musicians bring swing music to the joint and soon enough people are coming from all around to check out the acts. Someone should really do a documentary on director Roy Mack and the other men who were pumping out these musical two-reelers throughout the decade because I'm sure it could be quite entertaining. This is one of countless shorts that was made with very little interest in an actual story and instead everything was thrown into the musical numbers. This one here includes a very interesting one called Holiday in Hades, which is performed by Marcia Wayne. This is a piece set in Hell with devils doing a dance but the interesting thing is that at the back of the set are a couple images of a monster and it certainly looks like the creature from I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. That low-budget horror movie wouldn't come for nearly two more decades but the two monsters look so close to one another you wonder if someone hadn't seen this short as a child. Either way, this film here really isn't all that memorable outside this one number as the rest are rather clichéd and the music just isn't all that memorable.