After an ok pantomime about a boy creating rocket fuel with his
chemistry set and shooting his gramps into orbit, we are treated to
another of these Freddie Freeloader stories, one of the more annoying
characters Red Skelton used to play.
In this story, hobo Freddie (Red Skelton) is given a black box by
professor Munson (), together with a warning not to open it. Of course,
Freddie wants to open it nevertheless, but is continuously interrupted
(by, among others, guest star Edward Everett Horton as a fellow hobo), and
eventually, enemy agents send over sexy Tanya to get the box from him ...
but in the end it all turns out to be a trap by the FBI to capture the
enemy agents, and the box was just a red herring ... literally, so at
least Freddie's dinner for that day is secured ...
The pantomime part of this episode is mildly amusing, but once the
Freddie Freeloader episode starts, it's all just a bunch of old jokes made
all the worse by Red Skelton's ability to laugh before he tells
them ... which pretty much kills each and every joke on spot. Also, the
story is not particularly fetching.
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