The Rummy (1933) Review - Creepy Taxidermy and a Stuffed Flea

If you have twenty minutes to spare and love weird pre-code comedy shorts, The Rummy is absolutely worth your time. Slapstick fans who love dumb physical gags will probably dig this, but anyone looking for a logical plot or high-brow wit will absolutely hate it. 🚕

It starts with Billy wrecking his taxi in a way that looks incredibly painful but is treated like a minor oopsie. So naturally, his next career move is working at a taxidermy shop.

This is where we meet Ben Blue, who brings in a pet flea to get stuffed. Yes, you read that right. A flea.

The flea gets lost almost immediately, because of course it does.

Then they get locked in the shop overnight, and things get weirdly spooky. The taxidermy shop has all these dusty, creepy stuffed animals that look like they were made by someone who had only heard descriptions of animals over a bad phone line. 🦉

There is a giant owl that keeps staring at the camera, and I swear its eyes move once, though it might just be the grainy film quality. It reminds me of the chaotic energy you find in Three Stooges: Extreme Rarities, where the budget is low but the screaming is high.

Billy Gilbert shows up too, doing his usual sneezing routine which never fails to make me laugh. He has this way of building up to a sneeze that feels like a rocket launch.

And then there is John Aasen, this massive guy who just towers over everyone. His presence alone makes the tiny shop feel even more claustrophobic and strange.

The middle of the short is just people running around in the dark, bumping into stuff and getting scared of shadows. It’s not exactly high art, and some of the physical gags are so old they probably had dust on them even in 1933.

But there’s a real charm to how cheap and fast it feels. You can tell they shot this in about two days on a leftover studio set.

If you’ve ever dug deep into stuff like Buster's Nose Dive, you already know this specific flavor of short. It’s loud, slightly confusing, and ends very abruptly.

The ending makes almost no sense at all, by the way. They just sort of stop running and the movie ends.

Still, the flea bit is so stupidly funny. "Stuff my flea!" Who even came up with that? 🦟