August 5th, 1994

My friends, I hope you know me well enough to understand that I’m being sincere here, I’m not trying to show off with a wild take. The truth is I recently watched and enjoyed the movie THE LITTLE RASCALS. It kind of rules.

This was not an outcome I expected, or even considered. For the 30 years this movie has existed I’ve scoffed at it, assumed it was crap. Yes, it comes from director Penelope Spheeris, she of excellent punk rock documentaries. But I’m gonna have to pull out the Shaquille O’Neal “I wasn’t familiar with your game” quote here. I wasn’t showing the proper respect. I had some idea she lost it after WAYNE’S WORLD, because I thought BLACK SHEEP was kinda cheesy and all the rest seemed like things I wouldn’t like. I assumed this was some pablum for kids from an era where pablum for kids was extra bad. (See: 3 NINJAS KICK BACK.)

But here I am trying to watch most of the major movies of summer ’94, it was about the only situation where I was gonna give THE LITTLE RASCALS a shot, and almost immediately I realized I was probly gonna like it. It’s silly, it’s for kids, it might creep some people out by having children woo each other like they’re Popeye and Olive. But it made me laugh a whole bunch, it’s daring in the way it straight up does old Hal Roach shit and doesn’t try to conform to ‘90s expectations, it actually makes sense as part of the Spheeris filmography, and (most surprising to me) it’s artfully crafted. I guess mostly in the way that she could piece together a sensible movie with 95% of the cast being 5-7 year old non-actors, but also it’s a great looking movie! Credit to the transfer, which has a good level of film grain. I did not expect to watch THE LITTLE RASCALS 1994 and think “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore!” But here we are.

I guess I didn’t give much thought ahead of time to how they would approach it, but it’s not a period piece, or a high concept thing, it’s just the Little Rascals but they happen to have been born in the late ‘80s. I suppose it could be interpreted as a Tim-Burton’s-BATMAN sort of non-specific time period, because the world is modern, but most of the Rascals, especially the girls, seem pretty similar to the Depression era source material. They wear suspenders, overalls, bowler hats and things, but also modern clothing items. Buckwheat (Ross Bagley, later the kid in INDEPENDENCE DAY) has braids, Froggy (Jordan Warkol, voice by E.G. Daily, who also voiced Bam Bam in THE FLINTSTONES) has a mullet, the bullies Butch (Sam Saletta) and Woim (Blake Collins) have the leather jacket and spikey hair of little shits in any ‘90s kids movie, but when they put on goggles to ride their go-cart The Beast their faces look like kids who would get turned into donkeys in PINOCCHIO.

In the opening, the dog Petey runs around the neighborhood showing everybody a note from Spanky (Travis Tedford, a kid from Welch’s commercials) calling for an emergency meeting of the He-Man Womun Haters Club. They gather at the clubhouse, which is made of junk and is not in some suburban backyard like you’d expect, but on a hill overlooking downtown Los Angeles. These scenes were filmed in Echo Park, same neighborhood as MI VIDA LOCA, and holy shit, I was thinking. This really is the director of SUBURBIA.

The screenplay is credited to a whole bunch of people: Paul Guay & Stephen Mazur (LIAR LIAR) & Spheeris, story by those guys plus Robert Wolterstorff (The Jeffersons) & Mike Scott (SLAPPY AND THE STINKERS). But the plot is appealingly simple, just mixing together a couple premises from the old shorts and not making what might’ve been a fatal error of upping the stakes. It’s pretty much as simple as Alfalfa is courting Darla, but Spanky scares her away with pranks and she starts seeing the rich kid Waldo Aloicious Johnston III instead, also Alfalfa accidentally burns down the clubhouse and they need money to rebuild it, which they think they can win in a go-cart race, until Butch and Woim steal their prized go cart The Blur, so they have to figure out what to do. That’s about it!

Maybe the main reason it works for me is that most of the kids deliver their lines in weird ways like a kid you know repeating a funny thing, not a polished child actor reading lines. Reminded me more of RIDDLE OF FIRE than I ever would’ve guessed. Darla (Brittany Ashton Holmes) is particular funny mumbling sentences no child ever said, looking like a Campbell’s Soup kid or Little Debbie or somebody from another time, making the goofiest expressions. And Buckwheat is hilarious singing little songs to himself. Alfalfa (Bug Hall, later in THE STUPIDS and THE MUNSTERS’ SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS) is a few years older and much more natural at line readings, doing a full-on comedy performance and a good impression of the original character, and he fits right into the cartoon world of these other kids.

In an informative interview with Simon Abrams on rogerebert.com Spheeris discussed her methods, which included hugging every kid when they came on set, and she said “there was not one time on that shoot where any of these kids were a bummer,” though it was hard to keep them from wandering away in the middle of a shot to follow butterflies and stuff.

One of the more brilliant touches is that the villain Waldo (Blake McIver Ewing, CALENDAR GIRL), who wears white suits, is driven around by a chauffeur, and insults Alfalfa, is the one and only kid using the precocious-wiseass style of child acting so familiar from the type of family movies and sitcoms I try to stay away from. I was getting a kick out of this clash of styles, and then there’s a scene at a talent show where he does a musical number, and then I realized he was a full-on theater kid! A real pro! When I realized the kid was gay I felt bad about loving to hate him so much, but it just means he’s doing a great job portraying the character.

I found an interview with McIver that confirms my speculation. He was a kid who sang a song on Star Search, they wrote a talent show episode of Full House for him, then they liked him so much they made him a regular. The Olsen twins are extras in one scene of this, by the way, and Raven Symone in another. But most of the cast hadn’t acted much before, if at all.

Here’s another way Waldo is a funny villain. Imagine that it’s 1994, you want to have a scene where the spoiled rich kid villain calls his oil company asshole dad, and the dad says “You’re the best son money can buy.” What celebrity would you cast that the audience would immediately laugh and go “oh yeah, of course that piece of shit is his dad, no wonder this kid sucks so much”? That’s right, it’s Donald Trump. Luckily you only have to look at him for one brief shot until he returns during the outtakes in the credits, seeming like a pain in the ass.

Most of the movie takes place completely absent of adults, so when they need one they usually use someone famous, almost like a Muppet movie. Daryl Hannah, Lea Thompson, George Wendt and Whoopi Goldberg have bit parts. Spanky’s dad is played by Eric Edwards, who later played Pearl in BLADE, but that’s just a visual joke that Spanky’s dad looks like a giant Spanky.

Of course there are a few jokes about farts, and at least two parts that equate Alfalfa’s cowlick to a boner, but I tell you man I really did laugh at many of these jokes. Like any time Waldo insults Spanky or Alfalfa but they don’t know what the words means so they think he’s complimenting them. “How redundant.” “Thank you.” Or when Alfalfa is pulling off flower petals and when the last one is “she loves me not” he says “You guys don’t know what you’re talking about!” Or corny stuff like Courtland Mead (DRAGONWORLD) playing a character named “Uh-Huh” whose only real job is to occasionally answer a question “Uh-huh.” Or the scene where six of them go into a bank disguised as two adults to try to take out a loan. When the bank manager (Mel Brooks, LIFE STINKS) asks their account number one of them says, “Uh… seven?”

As far as “shit they used to do in the ‘90s that doesn’t fly anymore,” there’s a scene where Spanky and Alfalfa disguise themselves as female ballerinas to hide from Butch and Woim, and because of their winged costumes one of the real ballet students asks if they’re fairies, which they quickly deny.

The meaning is clear, so judge it if you will, but the boys are so dedicated and good at the shtick that it seems innocent to me. Maybe they’re too young to know how to do the offensive version of it. Just the Bugs Bunny version.

I think Spheeris really put this together well, rarely cheesy despite liberal use of risky old timey business like wipes and sped-up gags. I like how much the score by William Ross (orchestrator for BLOWN AWAY, THE FLINTSTONES and FORREST GUMP) sticks to the original themes, which play so interestingly against the contemporary world, but it almost always works when it switches to modern styles, like the electric guitars over Butch and Woim’s hellraising entrance or the goofy fusion when Buckwheat dances around to celebrate getting the dollar they tied to a duck to distract him. (There are also a few jokey needle drops, like Randy Newman’s “Short People.”)

I really think most directors making family comedies in the ‘90s would’ve felt the need to introduce some larger, adult villain with some kind of evil scheme that they have to rally against, and it would’ve turned into a big interminable slapstick battle at the end. Kind of like how THE FLINTSTONES worked really well when staying true to the sitcom formulas of the show but stumbled when trying to expand into feature film cliches. In fact, THE LITTLE RASCALS is executive produced by Steven Spielrock Spielberg and Amblin. Spheeris says the studio wanted him, he wasn’t interested, but signed on because he liked her script and was very helpful (but I haven’t seen her specify how). He must’ve recognized how fuckin cool it is that this just climaxes in a go-cart race. It’s a pretty spectacular one, though, with shades of DEATH RACE 2000 and Mad Max. I know they’re playing with frame rates and there’ve gotta be stunt doubles in some parts but it’s great how convincingly practical it looks.

There are some locations in this that are those sort of Leave It to Beaver/Dennis the Menace houses and perfectly manicured lawns, but to me it’s exciting how much of it uses more urban Los Angeles textures. It’s just nice for this type of fantasy to exist there. I took some screen grabs of locations I thought were unique for this type of movie:

I also thought it was interesting that Froggy’s house is pretty old and dilapidated. Not a shack or anything but needs a paint job. We get at most one glimpse of any of the characters at home. Most of their lives seem to be spent together, in the club house or around the city committing rascalry. I don’t have any reason to believe any of them are avoiding a bad home situation, I just think it’s cool that they could come from any type of background but they’re a club, a gang, working together and creating codes and traditions and ultimately learning to accept that Alfalfa likes girls.

But I couldn’t stop thinking that there was a parallel here to Spheeris’ first narrative movie, and probly the first one I saw by her, SUBURBIA (1983). If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a seminal punk rock/outsider film about a bunch of runaways squatting in an abandoned tract house they call T.R. House (for “The Rejected.”) I hadn’t seen it since the VHS days but I was thinking it would make an amazing double feature with THE LITTLE RASCALS so I did it, I found it streaming and put it on immediately afterwards.

SUBURBIA’s point of view character is Evan (Bill Coyne, “White Temple Member,” GUYANA TRAGEDY: THE STORY OF JIM JONES), a pretty normal seeming, Superman-comic-book-reading teen in the suburbs who gets fed up with his alcoholic mom (Donna Lamana, “Mental Patient,” FRANCES) and decides to try living on the streets downtown. He ends up at a punk show, where Keef (Grant Miner) drugs his drink. When an older, bleach blond guy who calls himself Jack Diddley (Chris Pedersen, from a band called The Dumps, later one of the guys with Anthony Kiedis in POINT BREAK, and then he became a NASCAR driver!?) finds him passed out outside later he feels sorry for him and offers him a ride.

Jack tells Evan about T.R. House and ends up bringing him to stay there. I like that he really doesn’t seem to be recruiting, he doesn’t try to convince him, just offers it as a possibility. Most of the people at the house are pretty accepting of him, though there’s a little bit of a cult or gang mentality, because in order to stay he has to allow them to brand a TR onto his arm. Evan does it off screen while fellow newbie Joe Schmo (Wade Walston) says no thank you and takes off. But later he changes his mind and comes back.

The other newcomer is Sheila (Jennifer Clay), introduced in a crazy cold open where she’s hitchhiking, gets picked up, they have to stop at a payphone and the driver’s toddler gets mauled by the pack of wild dogs that roams the area. There’s a certain fever dream, almost post-apocalyptic savagery to the world of SUBURBIA. Everything looks dark and grimy, most of the settings are either bland generic houses or bland generic houses gone to pot, covered in shitty graffiti. It’s an oppressive tone very fitting of the nihilistic characters. When life is like this what choice do you really have but to tell your parents to fuck off, chop your hair off in a cool way and form a bond with your fellow outcasts? Sheila’s wearing a very fake looking blond wig at first, so you know she’s gonna get a cool hair cut, as most of the rejects do.

The movie is obviously on the side of the punks, but doesn’t sanitize them. Producer Roger Corman required Spheeris to have some violence or nudity every ten minutes, and she used one of those at the punk show, where some dudes rip a woman’s clothes off. (To the credit of the club and band D.I. they’re pissed off and shut down the show over it.) But there’s a sweet side too. When Evan finds out his mom got a DUI he brings his Big-Wheel-riding little brother Ethan (Andrew Pece) to live at T.R. House. Sheila gives him a mohawk and likes to take care of him, even reading him bed time stories. And some of the other girls in the house like to hear the stories too even though they’re as old as Sheila.

Whenever it was I first saw this movie, the most exciting thing about it was that Flea was in it (credited as Mike B. the Flea). He was around 20 years old and this was a year before the first Red Hot Chili Peppers album. His character is apparently called Razzle and the memorable thing about him is that he carries a rat around with him. In one improvised scene he puts its head in his mouth. He’s a good example of how these rejects are weird anti-social people but basically friendly and good natured with people who don’t fuck with them.

The people who do fuck with them include suburban vigilantes calling themselves “Citizens Against Crime” who they get mad at for hunting the wild dogs. To be fair the rejects definitely provoke those guys at times, like when they drive by their garage sale and ask a woman if she has any vibrators for sale. But that doesn’t justify following the rejects to a T.S.O.L. concert and stabbing a security guard, or breaking into the house and tearing Sheila’s shirt off. Fuck these guys. They suck.

In the grimmest part of the movie (SPOILER), poor Sheila commits suicide and they don’t know what to do except carry her body to her parents’ house and ring the doorbell. Much of the script came from stories Spheeris heard while filming THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, and she says this actually happened when Darby Crash’s sister overdosed. Here it’s especially uncomfortable because they know she was running from physical and sexual abuse by her father (J. Dinan Myrtetus, THE POWER) and now they ask his permission to go to the funeral. On this viewing I was reminded of THE BIKERIDERS because their presence at the funeral causes tension and it turns into a big fight. It’s too bad THE LITTLE RASCALS didn’t have a scene like that – those boys would cause a real crack-up at the memorial service.

I really do think there are a large number of parallels between SUBURBIA and THE LITTLE RASCALS. The obvious one, of course, is between T.R. House and the He-Man Womun Haters Clubhouse – both junky jury-rigged domiciles where a group of misfits come together, following their own made up rules and traditions. They don’t hate womun or disallow girls, but there’s some bigotry involved – Joe ran away because his dad (Gavin Courtney) is gay, and Jack complains that his stepfather (Donald V. Allen, “Security Guard,” DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS) is Black. (I think in the movie’s point of view his stepfather is the only sympathetic adult, even though he’s a cop.)

The rascals are bullied by Butch and Woim, as well as Waldo, while the rejects are attacked and harassed by rednecks. The rascals are trying to raise money, and sometimes end up in fancier parts of town (like where Waldo lives), while the rejects go into the suburbs to go on post-apocalypse style raids, stealing things and scaring normies.

Alfalfa worries about sleeping at the clubhouse because of “wild dingos,” and he later gets chased by a dobermann. The rejects are sometimes threatened by (but also want to protect) the pack of vicious stray dogs (including at least one dobermann).

And on a filmmaking level, I think they’re related in the way Spheeris uses non-actors, getting awkward line readings that would traditionally be derided as “bad acting” but with a rawness and authenticity that makes it way better than if it was “good” actors. (Spheeris convinced Corman to let her do it by reminding him he cast real bikers in THE WILD ANGELS.)

So this really was a great double feature, but if anyone is ever so lucky/cool as to program it in a theater I recommend switching the order from how I did it. SUBURBIA is bleak and angry, about abused kids seeking family and comfort in each other, and only able to get it for so long. The two most innocent characters end up dying, and it ends on the tragic death of a child. Going from there into THE LITTLE RASCALS would be a real pick me up, like he’s gone to Heaven, his mohawk has sprouted into an alfalfa cowlick or something. Hell, somebody should edit them into one movie with a few flash forwards to make the connection clear.

Like THE FLINTSTONES, MAVERICK and LASSIE, THE LITTLE RASCALS was an attempt to capitalize on a “property” that many boomers grew up watching on TV. Being born in 1945, Spheeris is actually a year too old to be a boomer, but because of her connection to punk rock we subsequent generations accept her as ageless and poly-generational. THE LITTLE RASCALS too seems free of such constraints – I’ve come across more adults now nostalgic for having seen the 1994 movie as a kid than I have adults who felt nostalgic for the originals when they saw it. Though it got horrible reviews it made $67 million on a pretty low budget, making it a hit. Ten years later there was a DTV sequel called THE LITTLE RASCALS SAVE THE DAY – it had to be an all new cast and creative team, of course, but they gave Bug Hall a cameo as an ice cream man. I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know if it has any nods to SUBURBIA.

LITTLE RASCALS Summer of ’94 connections:

Like AIRHEADS (released on the same day) it has a reference to Milli Vanilli. Like MAVERICK and NORTH it has a special appearance by Reba McEntire, queen of the summer movies, I guess. Cinematographer Richard Bowen was second unit d.p. for WYATT EARP.

Most forgotten reference I picked up on:

After sitting on a whoopie cushion Alfalfa says he had “a little fahrvergnugen,” referencing a Volkswagen advertising slogan that we dumb Americans thought was funny at the time because foreign words are funny, especially when they sound like “fart.”