Summary
In a whimsical yet caustic exploration of Jazz Age puerility, The Spirit of '23 navigates the misadventures of a group of youths ensnared by the charms of a magician’s progeny. Their nocturnal odyssey into the realms of the occult—a séance that devolves into a cacophony of rattling bones and spectral manifestations—serves as a kinetic canvas for early cinematic slapstick. The narrative arc traces a trajectory from amateur prestidigitation to a frantic, sepulchral phantasmagoria within the confines of a supposedly haunted domicile. However, the true horror is not found within the creaking floorboards or the rattling skeletons, but in the chillingly mundane figure of a process server. This figure, lurking with a court summons in the cold light of dawn, underscores a quintessentially modern irony: the machinery of the law is far more relentless than the apparitions of the afterlife.
Synopsis
The boys meet a girl whose father is an amateur magician. They attend a séance and stay all night in the house, meeting with all sorts of comedy experiences with spooks, skeletons, etc. Finally they manage to escape only to be captured by a man with a court summons who has waited all night outside to catch them.
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