This Hal Roach comedy short, A Tough Winter, is the ninety-ninth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the eleventh talkie. Bascally a showcase for black comic Stepin Fetchit who gets special billing here, we see him going to his shack where the gang hangs out. Farina retrieves a love letter from the mail for him and is told by Stepin to read it since he can't read it during the day as he goes to NIGHT school. It happens to be from his sweetheart in Tennesse so now Farina has to have his ears stuffed with cotton since it's too hot for him to hear! In another room, Weezer relays instructions to Mary Ann of making taffy from the radio but because he keeps running back and forth to the kitchen, he misses the lady announcer's segue to rice pudding and Spanish tamale confusing Mary Ann with additions of Tabasco and Lux! After the concoction is completed, Jackie and the rest of the gang help themselves with the awful tasting but very sticky substance as everyone gets stuck on the walls as a result. As they all try to clean the mess, Stepin works in the basement on various pipes and electrical outlets that mixes variable appliances' functions such a telephone that vacuums, a vacuum that rings, and a refrigerator that plays music! The End. What I've just described portends the meandering nature of this "Our Gang" short that served as the pilot for a potential Stepin Fetchit movie short series. It's just as well that it never took place as Fetchit's characterization of the lazy Negro was amusing only in small doses and would be considered highly offensive today. Many of the scenes I've just described are good for some laughs though the final sequence was so confusing that the results were just too blah for me. So in summary, A Tough Winter is a curio worth seeing at least once. By the way, Stepin's real name was Lincoln Theodore Perry.
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