Aye, MacGregor!
There It Is is a surreal 1928 short comedy film directed by Harold L. Muller, starring Charley Bowers.
The Frisbee mansion is being plagued by a surreal spirit, the "Fuzz-Faced Phantom", who does things like make a fully-grown chicken appear from an egg and make a pair of pants dance. The panicked Frisbee patriarch calls Scotland Yard and summons a detective, the goofy MacNeesha (Bowers). MacNeesha boards a ship and comes to America to investigate just what is going on at the Frisbee residence. He brings along with him his sidekick MacGregor, who is, uh, a fly.
Tropes:
- Babies Ever After: MacNeesha and the nurse have gotten married and had twins, and all four of them are wearing kilts. And MacNeesha's little fly buddy MacGregor has gotten married and had twins as well.
- Bookcase Passage: Apparently all the panels on the walls of the Frisbee mansion are actually doors to hidden passageways.
- Deranged Animation: A rare example of Stop Motion Animation being mixed in with a live-action film to produce this effect, as the Fuzz-Faced Phantom keeps appearing and disappearing, pictures come to life, a bug with a magnifying glass is investigating, etc.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The mystery of the Fuzz-Faced Phantom is solved when the Frisbees realize that he's Grandpa, whom they forgot when they moved away. Just as they're all hugging, the pretty girl that MacNeesha has taken a fancy to reveals that the Frisbee mansion is actually the Daffydil Sanitarium, and all the Frisbees are really mental patients, except for her, the nurse.
- Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: When MacNeesha busts out his bagpipes and starts playing while riding in a cab, the cabbie thinks that his engine is breaking down and stops to oil it up.
- Ghostly Glide: The Fuzz-Faced Phantom does this. The effect is lampooned when the camera catches him standing on a scooter.
- Mind Screw: Sure, the Frisbee house is really an insane asylum. But that still doesn't explain stuff like the picture of the sailboat coming to life or MacNeesha going to sleep in his bed and waking up suspended over a bathtub.
- Non-Human Sidekick: MacGregor the fly, MacNeesha's sidekick and partner. MacNeesha carries him around in a matchbox.
- Portal Picture: Something like this happens with the picture of a sailboat on the ocean in MacNeesha's room. The picture comes to life. MacNeesha then thinks quickly and grabs an umbrella just in time to dodge the water that starts pouring out of the picture and onto his bed.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The butler tries to do this. Key word being "tries."
- Stop Motion: Used to animate MacGregor, MacNeesha's buddy and investigative partner, who happens to be a fly.
- Surreal Humor: The demented Frisbee house, where people keep getting pulled into the walls, pants dance by themselves, pictures come to life, and many other bizarre things occur.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: See The Ending Changes Everything above. The fact that the Frisbee mansion is actually a madhouse raises the question of how much of what occurred before MacNeesha arrived actually happened, although similarly crazy things happen to MacNeesha as well after he arrives.
- Uncle Tomfoolery: Some unpleasant humor with the butler, who is black, is petrified of the Phantom, and says stuff like "I's had my last scare—I ain't gonna stay no mo'."
- Visual Pun:
- MacGregor the fly is a literal Fly-Cop (which is an outdated 1920's slang word for a Detective).
- Mr. Frisbee calls Scotland Yard. Which is a yard. In Scotland. With detectives in kilts wandering around the place.
