page_title: Spooks Run Wild
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Spooks Run Wild / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped and edited lobby card for the American movie Spooks Run Wild (Monogram, 1941) featuring Bela Lugosi. As a low budget comedy-thriller, the film allowed Lugosi to parody his most famous role. Lobby card dated to a 1949 re-release.
context_page_description: Spooks Run Wild is a 1941 American horror comedy film and the seventh film in the East Side Kids series, starring Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and Bobby Jordan. Released in 1941, it was directed by Phil Rosen, in his first and only outing in the series, and produced by Sam Katzman. It is based on an original script by Carl Foreman and Charles R. Marion.
context_section_description: Since the series inception in 1940, the East Side Kids films had been, for the most part, a well balanced mix between comedy, drama, and social relevance. Following Huntz Hall's introduction into the series with 1941's Bowery Blitzkrieg, which made famous the Gorcey/Hall banter, producer Sam Katzman decided that the seventh film in the series would not only be a change of pace, but, would also be one of the biggest East Side Kids extravaganzas yet.
  With that in mind, Katzman enlisted the screen writing team of Carl Foreman and Charles R. Marion to pen the screenplay, which would feature Monogram's two most popular draws for the first time together on screen: Bela Lugosi and the East Side Kids. Foreman was paid $25 for his original story an $200 for the script. The film was originally known as Trail of the Vampire then Ghosts in the Night.|In April 1941 Monogram announced that Lugosi would make two starring vehicles for the studio, The Night of Horror and Kiss of Death and would also appear with the East Side Kids in Ghosts in the Night.
  At the last minute, with Bowery Blitzkrieg director Wallace Fox already attached to Columbia's The Lone Star Vigilantes, Katzman hired Russian-born director Phil Rosen, who had just finished filming Monogram's "The Deadly Game" to helm the production.
  Angelo Rossitto was based on the strength of his performance in Hellzapoppin'.
  Ghosts in the Night began filming in early August 1941, around the same time as Bowery Blitzkrieg was making its way into theatres. By the time filming wrapped only a week and half later, the film's working title was changed to Spooks Run Wild and hit theaters on October 24, 1941, just in time for Halloween.
  East Side Kid Donald Haines' last film. Haines enlisted as an aviation cadet for the United States Army Air Forces during this period and was later killed in action in 1943.
caption: Bela Lugosi, Angelo Rossitto and the East Side Kids.
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