Back to the Master List

Francis in the Haunted House

Released: 1956

Version: Video

Length: Approx. 80 min.

Rated: not rated

Main Cast: Mickey Rooney, Virginia Welles, James Flavin, Mary Ellen Kay, Ralph Dumke

Here's an older movie. I remember the old Francis, the Talking Mule movies as being good stuff. Unfortunately, my memory is bad. I had never seen this one and I don't plan to again. It has got to be one of the worst of the series.

To begin, we see a car going along on a road and then we see some suspicious characters knocking a big boulder down in front of it. Even though the car is only inches away from running into the boulder, it still manages to go into a fairly shallow ditch. This jostling had a negative effect on the well-being of the driver and he somehow died. Why just going off the road killed him is anyone's guess. How the bad guys knew they were getting the right guy is never explained. I guess no one else could have had the slightest reason for driving on that road. 

Oh, by the way, a mule sees all this. The mule also saw a screaming girl in a window of the castle, which is where the car was supposedly headed.

Anyway, next is a ballroom scene with a short dude named David Prescott (Mickey Rooney) dancing away with some lady named Lorna MacLeod (Virginia Welles). He gets a mysterious call telling Prescott to meet him in the back yard. It's Francis, the Talking Mule (Chill Wills)! (Note: How does a mule dial a phone? Especially in those days when they were rotary? Maybe it's old enough that all one had to do was take the phone off the hook and talk to the operator...) Prescott thinks he has never really met the animal...until Francis mentions that he was the mule that Prescott used to ride when he was young. Anyway, for some reason, Francis was told by someone to keep an eye on Prescott because the guy is a moron.

Due to this, Francis deems it prudent to tell the idiot about the murder so he can get some police over there to investigate. 

Well, since Prescott is anything but subtle, the police quickly think he's behind the murder. They're real smart. There are some sick people out there that like to brag about their sick deeds, but anyone who watches Prescott knows he's too stupid to pull anything off like this.

Anyway, if you think it'll get better after this, dream on. Prescott only digs his grave deeper throughout the show by doing dumb things like slipping into a secret passageway, mentioning a talking mule, and just acting like an utter fool. A lot of the time is wasted watching him get interrogated in a most cliché way. Yes, the cops use powerful lights to try to break this "evil-doer!" One of the interrogations is done by three scientists who run various tests on Prescott, like lie detectors and truth serum and even hypnotism. This makes for a long, drawn out sequence of events that made this viewer want to smack himself silly for watching such awful tripe.

Francis figures everything out and we find out he knows how to tell fake art from real art, can break into castles, get into costumes, make an empty suit of armor ride him, write a note, and do many other un-equine type things. There is a twist in the movie that I should have seen coming, but I didn't. Suffice it to say, the bad guys are almost as stupid as Prescott and seem to have gone to the same bad acting school because ALL the acting stinks.

The Good Stuff:

The Bad Stuff:

I don't recommend this movie at all. The only reason to watch it is if you're a hardcore Francis fan and you just have to see them all.

Back to top