Hi'-Neighbor! (1934) User Reviews

A little déjà vu happening here.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 4 January 2012]

The film begins with a moving fan rolling down the street. The boys are thrilled when they see a beautiful new toy fire engine on the truck and follow it--hoping to make a rich new friend. However, the new boy wants nothing to do with them and won't let them ride his neat firetruck. So, the gang decides to build their own. Not surprisingly, when they take it for a spin on the big hill, the shortcomings in their design become all too apparent.

This film bears a lot of similarity to another Our Gang short--"Hook and Ladder"--which is about the boys building their own firetruck in order to help the local firemen put out fires. However, the rear-projection in the final scene is a lot more obvious here in "Hi' Neighbor" and it's not quite as good as the earlier film. Worth seeing but far from their best.

Hi'-Neighbor! marked a new direction in the Our Gang series

[tavm · 8/10 · 10 November 2014]

This Hal Roach comedy short, Hi'-Neighbor!, is the one hundred twenty-sixth in the "Our Gang/Little Rascals" series and the thirty-eighth talkie. Wally and the gang see a new toy fire engine arriving in town and attempt to make friends with the rich kid who owns it but he wants nothing to do with them. Also the girl Wally has a crush on, Jane, takes a ride in that fire engine so he and the rest of the gang try to make their own...This is one of the most enjoyable of the talkie Our Gang comedies as we see the gang use their imagination in building something out of discarded parts because of their desire to one-up on someone higher up the social ladder, so to speak! So that's definitely a recommendation of Hi'-Neighbor! P.S. Four months had passed after the previous OG short-Wild Poses-had finished filming. Spanky had been loaned to various studios during this time and in one of those features he made for them-Miss Fane's Baby Is Stolen for Paramount-he caught a whooping cough and passed it on to co-star Baby LeRoy! As punishment, Spank had been suspended, hence the gap. During that gap, director Robert F. McGowan had decided to quit the series. He was replaced by Gus Meins who would subsequently helm the series for the next two years. Newcomers to the gang included Wally Albright, Jackie Lynn Taylor who played Jane here, and Scotty Beckett who would be paired with Spanky. The rich kid is played by Jerry Tucker whose real last name is Schatz. When this short appeared on Disc 4 of "The Little Rascals-The Complete Collection" DVD set, his elderly self appeared in the intro of that one as he considered this one his most enjoyable film experience with the gang. He's one of the few members still alive today.

So much fun being a kid in the 30's, and no video game involved!

[mark.waltz · 8/10 · 3 April 2015]

Way before the creation of the first video game (Pong?), children used to have to create their own fun, building things from scratch, climbing trees, creating tunnels out of T.V. trays and cardboard tables and just being more creative. Children could think, which probably lead to them having more in their brains as they moved into young adulthood, and their playtime also proved to be even more fun and energetic. Our Gang showed youngsters simply being kids, sometimes cruel, but other than a few of them, they were not bullies, not racists and certainly could learn a good lesson from whatever prank they came up with. The gang is impressed by the presence of a child's fire engine going by on a moving truck, but the new neighbor who owns it is a snotty little pretentious brat who won't even let them go for a ride in it, with the exception of a pretty little local girl. The kids decide to build their own truck, and this requires the use of much of the neighborhood garbage and for the unfortunate adults working in the neighborhood, loose things they happen to need for their own work. Traffic will literally have to come to a standstill when the giant contraption that the gang builds proves to be a comical threat to the walking ability of passing adults and the driving ability of real cars on the street. Hysterically funny, this "Our Gang" short profiles a young Spanky in one of his early leads, and will indeed leave you in stitches.

Probably the Best

[Derek03 · 22 August 2003]

Hi'-Neighbor is probably the best rascals short of all.The gang's determination and imagination in building their own fire engine is great!Spanky and Stymies interactions are great!Scotty and Spanky are always good together.Wally is bound and determined to show up Jerry and win Jane back.Everybody likes to see the rich snob get what's coming to them.The scene where Jerry tries to show Jane the gang doesn't have a fire engine is great.He winds up getting his pants ripped off and running away!Only to later be defeated in a race after the gang's brakes,break!This one is hilarious!!!

Hard to top

[xidax · 10/10 · 21 December 2000]

This is the funniest, most thrilling OUR GANG I've ever seen. If I could wish for one picture in the series to be named to the National Film Registry or to survive the Apocalypse or what have you, it would probably be this one. I wouldn't say it's the best - the Rascals made too many different kinds of film for any one to be the best - but it embodies what made the series great.

One of those great things is Spanky McFarland. In some of his early shorts his grumpiness is a little overdone, but here he's just perfect. I doubt any of the children have ever been cuter.

I love this short!

[LittleRascal-15 · 10/10 · 18 August 1999]

Okay, I love the Little Rascals! The ones from the 30s and 40s. 1934, i think, is the best season of shorts. Mainly it's becuase it contains Scotty Beckett and Spanky McFarland at there best! I give "Hi Neighbor" 10 stars!

Fire engine fun for Our Gang

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 6 July 2017]

HI'-NEIGHBOR! is another fun Our Gang effort, quite unlike the others I've watched. This one's about the kids building their own fire engine and then getting into a race with a rich kid rival. The story is fast-paced and features a non-stop barrage of jokes, most of which work well, and it all builds up to a climactic action sequence which is very funny and inventive.

Showin' Up The New Kid With The Little Rascals

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 28 May 2000]

An OUR GANG Comedy Short.

Although the Gang tries to be friendly with a snooty new rich kid - `HI-NEIGHBOR!' - it's obvious he disdains them all. And when his spiffy fire engine impresses Jane, it's time for the Rascals to build their own competition vehicle.

Some good laughs here. The building of the contraption, especially Spanky helping Stymie put on the wheels, is hilarious. Highlight: the race down the very steep hill.

PLOT SUMMARY: The Rascal fellows build a wooden fire engine for a race

[nupercanil · 10/10 · 8 March 2013]

The plot seems simple but it is cleverly moved along to its conclusion. Difficult to film because the stunts toward the end looked dangerous but of course the action was slowed down at filming and sped up later. The studios didn't have FX back in 1930s. Classic of the series. The Rascals had their clothes removed at the finish and that was a bit tricky to film to make it seem the rosebushes did it. The rest of the short was straight-forward filmed. As Beginners Luck, this was lightly suggestive, in Beginners Luck Mother gets her dress pulled off, here you see the fellow get his pants pulled off. These shorts were shown at Drive Ins along with Tom and Jerry et cetera cartoons. It was all harmless fun.

This "Our Gang" episode features a new director . . .

[pixrox1 · 8/10 · 3 March 2018]

. . . who takes the series onto a radical new track. When a rich kid moves into the "Little Rascal's" neighborhood and steals "Wally's" girlfriend "Jane" with a new toy riding fire truck costing the equivalent of two years' Great Depression Era food rations for a family of eight, the replacement guy directing "Our Gang" realizes that the only way his "Little Rascals" can compete with this "Little Lord Fauntleroy-type is by stealing all the useful building materials and spare hardware not welded down in their neighborhood. Though this "Take from the Rich, Give to the Poor" philosophy was the guiding light for Warner Bros. (aka, the Robin Hood Studio) during the 1930s, it was total anathema to MGM's Lions' Den (aka, The Millionaires' Boys Club). Since Our Gang emanated from MGM--NOT Warner Bros.--seeing these suddenly terrible tykes taking after Robin Hood threw contemporary Fat Cat audiences for a loop. (Hospital admission records for the week following HI NEIGHBOR's release saw a doubling of patients transported from lions' dens, while contributions from Warner Bros.' show places to the local infirmaries remained static.) But, if you're a patriotic Union Label American, HI NEIGHBOR should roll right down your slope.

Boys and fire engines

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 23 December 2016]

Already a successful combination between the Wars. "Hi'-Neighbor!" is an American black-and-white short film from 1934, so this one is already over 80 years old. It was directed by Gus Meins and features several of the child actors that you may know or not know from other short films starring the Rascals / Our Gang. And the "our" in this name is very fitting as the makers here want us to cheer for the kids. The story is pretty generic. Good guys, one bad guy and a female love interest, this is something we have seen in many other, also very recent films. The kids build a fire engine in here and they want to impress a girl who prefers driving with a rich kid (the antagonist) early on. This rich kid is played by Jerry Tucker, who died a month ago in fact and may be one of the last (if not the last) survivor from these countless Our Gang movies. First cast is Wally Albright here, a blonde gang member and I see he led a relatively normal life and acting career unlike other gang members. i liked him in here. Too bad he usually does not have as much screen time or as big of a role. Anyway, story-wise there are 2 or 3 funny scenes there and the plot is okay, but overall, it just wasn't a particularly entertaining watch. The construction scenes were actually really boring. Even McFarland had very little to work with here and he usually elevates the material. It's not one of my favorite Rascal films. No idea why it is so popular. Watch something else instead.

Suburban

[tedg · 18 February 2006]

Between the wars, and in spite of the depression, America remained in two halves. Today, those are red and blue states, but in the 30s it was rural America and the cities. During this time, the cities got bigger and the farm areas somewhat thinner but more resolute. You were either in one or the other, period.

There were essentially no suburbs, what we would think of today as suburbs. Except in Southern California. Suburbs were invented after the second war with Levittown and the huge incentive of veteran's mortgages. Only then would they become something fully recognized in the film consciousness as physically representing the middle class melting pot.

That's why it is so noticeable here. The gang lives in a suburb where rich, poor, back and white coexist.

Now think about that a moment. I'm pretty sure that Roach had no special agenda. This suburb was outside Los Angeles and handy for filming. But the notion of a gang that transcends class (but not in this episode) and race, and even sex mostly is pretty darn commendable. And I suppose in the long run it was as influential as all the other stuff that gets Spike Lee riled.

This one has a familiar theme for the Gang shorts: class is bad, women are fickle and attracted to cash, cooperation and imagination trumps all.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

a good 'Our Gang' short

[fanofmclaughlin · 24 May 2004]

In this episode the rascals build a fire engine from scratch, to use in a race.

The brake on the home-made fire engine fails at the end and the fire engine ends up in a pond. In one scene a boy is sitting on a board and someone drills through the board, ripping off the boy's pants and, I think, his underpants (!)

An unusual episode because before the rascals also get their clothes torn off by shrubs on the side of the road as they ride down to the pond-- where they all get dunked.