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Alfalfa, Buckwheat and the gang are back in this stupendous new collection.

A little history before this review starts, just so that we can keep up with things later on. Back in the silent film era, a producer named Hal Roach was king of the comedy shorts. Having dealt with Harold Lloyd and the Keystone Kops, Roach found a large amount of success in a series of shorts that dealt with a gang of young children. Originally, this series had numerous one-shot and short-lived names, such as Hal Roach’s Rascals, before they finally settled on Our Gang. When sound came along, Our Gang was right there and continued in popularity, eventually adding the characters that would make the series its most famous (Buchwheat, Alfalfa, Spanky, Darla, etc.). Eventually, Roach sold the rights to MGM, who continued the series without him. Roach had made 80 Our Gang shorts during the sound era before selling out, and later when he bought the rights back from MGM, he found that they retained the rights to the name Our Gang. Thus, these 80 shorts were sold into television syndication under the title The Little Rascals to avoid confusion with MGM’s shorts.

After years of paltry VHS releases, Genius has collected all 80 of Roach’s shorts into a fantastic 8-disc collection entitled The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection. To say this set is a dream is underscoring its entertainment value greatly. There’s a reason these shorts continue to be fondly remembered, almost a century after they started. What made the shows so great was that they let the kids (some of which were only two years old at the time) be kids. Their naturalness shows and it makes the shorts so much funnier.

The prints here look extremely good. They aren’t remastered to the level some of, say, Warner Bros, shorts are, but they still look quite nice. It’s interesting to note, as pointed out earlier, that several of the most popular characters wouldn’t appear until deep into the series. Take Buckwheat for instance. He was played by no less than three different actors/actresses (fun fact: Buckwheat started off as a female in the series). The version we’re most acquainted with – played by Billie Thomas – wouldn’t show up until Disc 5 of this set. Alfalfa doesn’t even arrive until four shorts later on the same disc and Darla until Disc 6.

Disc 8 is devoted to special features, including a great documentary on the series, a short featurette discussing racism in the series (though the black characters were often stereotyped, this series was one of the earliest examples of black kids playing together with white kids). Three of the silent-era shorts are included as bonus films as well, and several of the surviving Rascals are on hand to discuss their roles and times on the series.

The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection may not be entirely accurate (I’d love to see all of the silent films collected, as well as the MGM era Our Gang), but it’s a great set for nostalgic fans who loved watching these after school on a fuzzy UHF station. It’s a wonderful addition to this fan’s collection.

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