voyttbots wrote:

It isn`t CASTLE IN THE DESERT. LOST IN A HAREM is an MGM comedy. The one that I was thinking of was THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW haunted house episode. 15 years past your cutoff.

Exactly. I'm beginning to think that with the exception of Lost in a Harem, that the portrait with human eyes gag was a cartoon and television gag. Scooby Doo in the first season had the gag, Andy Griffith, as you say, Gilligan's Island, I think, possibly the Monkees, and so on. But the gag appears to be definitely the product of a later era in Haunted House and mystery stories. I can sort of understand why the gag works better in a cartoon than it would live action. The cartoon can have the eyes very exaggerated to make the gag play well. It's just I thought finding this gag in earlier films was going to be a no-brainer.

Little did I know.

DK