When talking pictures came in, a lot of vaudeville performers were able to preserve their acts on film ... notably in the Vitaphone shorts filmed in Brooklyn (NY), which typically ran for ten minutes. Unfortunately, some vaudeville acts didn't deserve ten minutes on their tod, so several of them would be lumped together in a compilation film. 'Nine O'Clock Folks' is one such godawfulness, which has so little talent on offer that it even manages to bung in a vague attempt at a plot line.
We're in some hick village in the Ozarks where the folks need a new steeple, so they put on a show to raise the money. The best turn on the bill here is Wilbur Hall, unbilled in the credits but playing some guy named 'Bert'. He does his eccentric dance on a pair of plank shoes, which he performed previously (and better) in 'King of Jazz' and would later repeat on Spike Jones's TV show. For an even better and funnier dance on similar shoes, look for the film 'Little Tich and His Big Boots' which was made way back in 1900 but has recently been spotted on YouTube.
Three young ladies billed as Faith, Hope and Charity are quite pretty (well, two of them are) but insist on performing a song in that horrible twangy harmony which renders so many country-western songs unbearable for me.
We also get an act cried the Toonerville Trio ... all four of them, and that's the most entertaining part of their act. They perform 'Saint Louis Blues' on some sort of skiffle instruments. A previous IMDb reviewer has called them the 'legendary' Mound City Blue Blowers, but I don't see (or hear) what's so 'legendary' about them. There seems to be some rule about blues musicians: the more obscure and unimportant any bluesman was, the more important some writer will make him out to be.
The closing turn, with a dog dressed in human clothes, is genuinely painful to watch: not because it's allegedly cruel to the dog, but because it's just so stupid and unfunny. It's made even worse because this act is ostensibly being performed for all those hillbillies in the room, but it's staged in a manner so that it would be impossible for most of them to see. Which makes them luckier than me, sitting through this rubbish. My rating for "Nine O'Clock Folks": one point out of ten. If I have to spend ten minutes with hillbillies, I'd rather be with Daisy Mae and a jug of moonshine.