This Universal short film, "Boo," cannibalizes clips from two of Universal's early horror films, "Frankenstein" (1931) and "The Cat Creeps" (1930), as well as the German silent film "Nosferatu" (1922), for the purposes of mocking them. Whatever its original affect, today, it's the mocking of the short's narrator, with his lame wise-cracks, that has become the source of mockery. "Boo" is right. If there's anything to laugh at here, it's at the voiceover's expense, not the film clips. Many first-year students of film production these days could make a movie like this.
As others have mentioned, "Boo" is a knockoff of the similar product of Pete Smith Specialties over at rival studio MGM, as well as a product of the adoption of radio-type practices in the still-relatively-new age of talking pictures. Today, the looping of clips here for supposedly-comical effect seems to prefigure the animated GIFs of humorous moments in movies and TV programs that now pop up throughout the web, although the looping format actually predates the invention of film and was employed in "pre-cinema" moving-picture devices based on philosophical toys such as the phenakistiscope and zoetrope.
By the way, Universal already had a print of "Nosferatu," for which they bought the rights when planning to make their "Dracula" (1931), the film that launched horror as a staple genre in Hollywood. Additionally, "Boo" contains the only known surviving footage of "The Cat Creeps," which was a sound remake of the silent "The Cat and the Canary" (1927), a Universal film directed by a German. "Boo" pretends the footage depicts Dracula, and, indeed, the shadowy shot of a hand attacking a woman in bed is similar to a scene in "Nosferatu." I suppose the filmmakers of "Boo" used "The Cat Creeps" clip rather than the one in "Nosferatu" because it seemed more likely to be humorous. "Boo" is an in-house parody of Universal's own characters--even though it uses "Nosferatu" instead of its own Dracula. Via editing, it suggests the first on-screen meeting of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster--predating Universal's monster rallies of the 1940s, especially the series' end in self-parody with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948).
As others have mentioned, "Boo" is a knockoff of the similar product of Pete Smith Specialties over at rival studio MGM, as well as a product of the adoption of radio-type practices in the still-relatively-new age of talking pictures. Today, the looping of clips here for supposedly-comical effect seems to prefigure the animated GIFs of humorous moments in movies and TV programs that now pop up throughout the web, although the looping format actually predates the invention of film and was employed in "pre-cinema" moving-picture devices based on philosophical toys such as the phenakistiscope and zoetrope.
By the way, Universal already had a print of "Nosferatu," for which they bought the rights when planning to make their "Dracula" (1931), the film that launched horror as a staple genre in Hollywood. Additionally, "Boo" contains the only known surviving footage of "The Cat Creeps," which was a sound remake of the silent "The Cat and the Canary" (1927), a Universal film directed by a German. "Boo" pretends the footage depicts Dracula, and, indeed, the shadowy shot of a hand attacking a woman in bed is similar to a scene in "Nosferatu." I suppose the filmmakers of "Boo" used "The Cat Creeps" clip rather than the one in "Nosferatu" because it seemed more likely to be humorous. "Boo" is an in-house parody of Universal's own characters--even though it uses "Nosferatu" instead of its own Dracula. Via editing, it suggests the first on-screen meeting of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster--predating Universal's monster rallies of the 1940s, especially the series' end in self-parody with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (1948).