MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN (1950)

After winning a brand new house in part 2, Pa Kettle now wins an all-expenses paid trip to New York City for him and Ma. Problem is they can’t find anybody to babysit their 15 hellspawn. Fortune raises its head though once again when Pa bumps into a fleeing bank robber (Charles McGraw) who agrees to babysit the children. The only thing the bank robber wants in exchange is for Pa to give an “empty” bag to his brother in NYC. The bag actually holds 50,000 clams, 49,997 cabbages and 3 duckets. All kinds of wacky things happen next.

MA AND PA KETTLE GO TO TOWN holds up surprisingly well for its age. It’s also surprising just how much is packed into its 79-minute runtime! I mean there is all kinds of non-stop stuff being added to the story and even more impressive is…all of it is funny. One gag that cracked me up was when Pa was at the top of a skyscraper and he pours a cup of water off the side to see how long it would take to get to the bottom. Later on, him and Ma are walking down the sidewalk when the water hits Pa in the head and he remarks that it took longer that he thought. Haha. What the fuck is that joke? Classic. I also got a kick at out of how psychotic the children were. They were like fucking Jigsaw to everybody. They tricked one guy into scrubbing his face with sandpaper. They kidnapped two cops then tied them up and tried to kill them in a bonfire and another dude they bound upside-down and were about to dunk his head into a pot of boiling water!

Super-fast pace, tons of great jokes, strong cast, awesome vintage NYC sights, fun story. MAPKGTT might not be the kind of movie you can watch over and over, but for the occasional visit, it's a lot of fun.  I also really enjoyed seeing the normally serious Charles McGraw in a comical role.

Part 1 - The Egg and I (1947)
Part 2 - Ma and Pa Kettle (1949)
Part 4 - Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951)
Part 5 - Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair (1952)
Part 6 - Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation (1953)
Part 7 - Ma and Pa Kettle at Home (1954)
Part 8 - Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955)
Part 9 - The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956)
Part 10 - The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957)

GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE (1942)

"George Washington should have chopped this house down instead of the cherry tree."

After the initial shock of seeing the beautiful Ann Sheridan married to Jack Benny, I enjoyed this film and even laughed out loud a number of times, especially when Benny first sees the house: "I couldn't warm up to this place if I was burned alive in it!"

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Benny and Sheridan are apartment dwellers in NYC. Benny is happy, but Sheridan wants to own a home in the country. After their dog (Terry a.k.a. "Toto" from THE WIZARD OF OZ!) chews up a rug and cause their landlord (Franklin Pangborn) to fall down, they're forced to move. Without consulting her husband, Sheridan buys a 200-year-old run down money pit out in the middle of nowhere. He hates it from the moment he sees it (and falls through it's floors and even a few times into the well), but after all kinds of wacky misadventures he begins to like it.

It's not the most original script ever written, but I got quite a few laughs out of it and will definitely watch it again. Good supporting cast also: Hattie McDainel, Franklin Pangborn, Charles Coburn and Percy Kilbride.  Highly recommended, it's probably my favorite of the repairing-a-dilapidated-house subgenre.

I could be wrong, but to me the interior shots looks a lot like the interior shots from ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.