Helping Hands (1941)
Genre : Family, Comedy
Runtime : 0M
Director : Edward L. Cahn
Synopsis
Inspired by his soldier brother, Spanky decides to organize a military unit among his friends, collecting odds and ends for the war effort.
Alfalfa and our gang try to win fifty dollars on a radio contest.
The gang is participating in a program sponsored by the Golden Age Dramatic League. They present their own fractured version of Quo Vadis. Things go from bad to worse when the neighborhood tough kids disrupt the show. The pie fight is given a new twist by use of some slow motion sequences.
Alfalfa tries to back out of a fight by pretending to be incapacitated.
Alfalfa gives up being "King of the Crooners" to sing opera, but a nightmare of being under the thumb of an evil producer sends him back to his roots.
Spanky and the gang discover a demonstration of a "human-like" robot named Volto and are inspired to create a robot themselves to do their chores for them. Slicker Walburn convinces them they will need "invisible rays" to bring it to life which he just happens to have to sell to them. As they rush off to get their money, Slicker gets Boxcar Smith to wear the robot's outer body so when he "brings" the robot to life, it will be Boxcar bringing it to life. The gang unsuspectedly gets their robot to mow the lawn at Froggy's house, but with a signal from Slicker, Boxcar runs amok and mows down everything in his path. Froggy gets to explain what happened to his parents who bust up the fraud and get the miscreants to work with the gang to clean up the mess.
The gang goes after pirate treasure they believe is hidden in a cave.
The schoolchildren lost their last teacher because she got married and quit her job. When the brother of their teacher Miss Crabtree comes to visit, the children mistake him for a suitor. The children tell abominable lies about Miss Crabtree to try to discourage the man. Meanwhile, one of the children is selling answers to the upcoming oral exam. Unfortunately for the students, the young entrepreneur used a book of minstrelsy and blackface as his source for the "answers".
The Rascals have a boxing arena that could pack them in if they could find fighters who would actually mix it up. Harry and Farina notice a rivalry between two very large young kids, Joe and Chubby, that would fill the bill if only the two heavyweights would put aside their gentle natures. Farina gets an idea: tell each of the lads that the other will take a dive in the second round. So the fight begins and the stands are filled; but will the combatants actually throw a punch? Ernie has one more trick up his sleeve to get the fists flying and the crowd on its feet. Sweet science indeed.
The gang help Scotty and his grandfather after an obnoxious lunch counter owner forces them to move their lemonade stand.
The gang packs up for a camping trip to Cherry Creek two miles from their home, but to them it is the wilderness. After night falls, the hooting owls and croaking frogs conjure up visions of spooks. When a thunderstorm hits, they all scurry for home.
Our Gang member Alfalfa comes face to face with his wealthy lookalike Cornelius.
The Our Gang gets splashed by mud from a passing car and so using some cleaning fluid to get rid of the mud; they unknowingly created a bad odour among themselves.
Alfalfa imagines himself as a western movie hero battling with Butch for Darla's heart.
One of a handful of currently unavailable Hal Roach/MGM “Our Gang” silent films, School Begins was a series of gags built around the unenviable ritual of returning to school during the first week of September. School begins and some gang members are forging notes from their mother wanting out. Then too-young Wheezer parades by the school with escaped circus seals following him, causing a disturbance.
While playing baseball, Mickey runs into the street to catch a fly ball and is struck by a car. When the gang visit him in the hospital they are appalled to find the ward populated by many other children injured in automobile accidents. The Our Gang kids resolve to do something about the problem, and thus the "1-2-3-Go Safety Society" is born.
Many of the "Our Gang" kids are in their secret clubhouse - so secret that some wannabe members have troubles trying to find the tunnel entrance - planning their next game, which will be a Wild West shootout. They run into some obstacles in playing the game, including objections from parents, and as such they decide to postpone it until the wee hours of the next morning and play it in the streets of the neighborhood. As it begins to rain during the middle of their shootout that morning, they decide to take refuge in a neighborhood house. What they are unaware of is that the house belongs to inventor W.R. Jones, who rigged it to be a "magnetic house", a demonstration for a possible amusement park attraction. Not knowing about the house's rigged contraptions leads to a lot of misadventures for the gang not related to shooting Indians as they try to figure out what's happening around them.
It's the Fourth of July and the mother of Our Gang member Joe Cobb is doing a brisk business at her fireworks stand. Briefly left in charge of the stand, Joe does his best not to blow up himself or his friends, but a poorly-aimed skyrocket owned by Allen "Farina" Hoskins triggers a somewhat premature but undeniably spectacular display of pyrotechnics.
Spanky and Alfalfa fake a toothache to get out of school.
Dickie throws a birthday party to try to raise money to buy his mother a birthday present.
Alfalfa and the gang decide to turn to a life of crime, but Spanky tries to trick them with a fake burglary.