Don't listen to the negative reviews

A Masterpiece!

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A cute film where Bela Lugosi meets The East Side Kids(Bowery Boys). The movie is fun to watch if you like the older comedy-horror films. I did not bust-a-gut laughing but I did find the film enjoyable - refreshing.The Boys end up in a boys camp, peewee is shot, there is a murderer on the loose, a strange creepy old house, some humor and, of course, Bela Lugosi. This really is a good family style horror film - good to watch with the kids.Lugosi has much better films than this one but the movie is a must for Lugosi fans - it's a simple, lighthearted comedy-horror film.Make it a double feature with Ghosts on the Loose (1943)! 6.5/10

1. When Bela Lugosi's character (Nardo) and his sidekick drive up to the filling station, and later, when the Professor Von Grosch drives up, the attendants is already reading a book about the Monster Killer (supposedly Lugosi) and the Professor who "has come to save us."2. When the Boy are whisked off the street to camp, none gets to even see his parents.3. Nardo's and Luigi's vanishing act at the cemetery is never explained. Was the cemetery caretaker tricked by illusion?4. Lugosi, when he arrives at the Billings Estate, had asked for directions there so it is assumed he had not been in the mansion before. Yet, he seems to know all the nooks and crannies of the house when Muggs and the kids arrive. Nardo was driving only a truck with caskets in them. Suddenly he is settled in. When Nardo and Luigi were in the cemetery, they saw Diana Billings headstone. "Diana Billings. Winter came after 18 "schort" summers," Nardo says. "She was beautiful." It is not explained if he knew Diana or how he came to occupy her former home. 5. When the kids disappear from camp and Jeff and Linda's cannot locate them, Jeff rushes into the camp office. One is sitting around and the other is at his desk reading a paper. Jeff announces there is no sign of the boys and he's going to town "and we'll probably need a search party," he says in an urgent way. The camp official just keeps on looking at the paper without flinching. "OK," he says and keeps on reading. Look, camp counselor, 6 of your kids are missing. What is so interesting in what you are reading?6. And after all the loose ends are tight up at the haunted Mansion and the search party and the kids and Lugosi are all sitting in the living room for an inpromptu magic act by Nardo, why is Margie the soda fountain girl there? What made her journey to that place of mayhem in the middle of the night?Wonderful movie. Twists and turns and soooo nonsensical. I love it!

I have been and always will be a person who hates the Bowery Boys (a.k.a, The East Side Kids or The Dead End Kids). Most of it is because several of the actors associated with this series were obnoxious and unlikable (Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall come immediately to mind). The rest of it is because most of their films are poorly written and terribly unfunny--a real problem when they are supposed to be comedies! In light of my hatred, SPOOKS RUN WILD came as such a surprise. Okay, it isn't high art or a must-see film, but considering it paired the unfunny group with Bela Lugosi (who at this point in his career would appear in anything--and I do mean anything), it was much, much better than it should have been and is an agreeable time-passer.The obnoxious teens go off to summer camp for underprivileged inner city kids. Oddly, even though the radio announces that a serial killer is loose, they STILL take the boys to the camp which is exactly where the maniac was spotted. Perhaps they thought that their deaths would be a public service. Anyway, the guys decide to wander around at night (huh?) and eventually find themselves in a haunted mansion with Bela Lugosi and his silent dwarf assistant, Luigi. Considering that Lugosi is dressed a lot like Dracula, it isn't surprising that the boys think Lugosi and Luigi are killers and they spend most of the rest of the film running about the mansion getting into trouble. Considering everything, it's amazing how patient Lugosi's character was with the boys, as he seems to take all their antics in stride (perhaps that was the morphine kicking in).The film features some decent though not big laughs. Many of the best lines are delivered by the Black member of the gang, Sunshine Sammy. Now in the 21st century, his being called "Sunshine Sammy" and a few of his antics might be seen as very politically incorrect. However, in context, he was an excellent character and very progressive for the day. He was as liked as any White member of the gang in the film and they didn't make any of the stereotypical "Black guy in a haunted house" jokes.Overall, this is an important film for Bela Lugosi fans. I am certainly one of them and have even seen just about all his very worst films. I had resisted seeing this one because I thought being from Monogram Films (a very low-budget studio) and with the East Side Kids it would be just another bad horror flick--but I was pleasantly surprised. Others might also enjoy it, but it's not much more than a fair time-passer.FYI--The boys and Lugosi teamed up again two years later in GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE. It isn't as good as SPOOKS RUN WILD, but it is still quite watchable.

The boys are rounded up and sent to summer camp in the Catskill mountains in "Spooks Run Wild". However, there is a pretty waitress in the town's diner that they would like to have a date with, so they sneak away from the camp at night-time and one of them is shot by the caretaker of the local cemetery which forces the boys to take refuge in Lugosi's creepy hillside manor. There has been a killer on the loose and the boys naturally think that Lugosi is the killer and spend a nervous night meandering through his mansion trying to find their entranced friend who had been given a mild sedative. Nice film and the first of the East Side Kids film to feature Huntz Hall. The films studio, Monogram, reunited Lugosi and the East Side Kids two years later in the less entertaining "Ghosts on the Loose". Hall's line in "Spooks Run Wild" pertaining to his wearing a suit of armor: "My tailor told me it would wear like iron" is absolutely hilarious!