THE GHOST BREAKERS (1940)

A huge storm has broken out over Manhattan, causing widespread power outages. Radio commentator Laurence Lawrence (Bob Hope) has just pissed off Frenchy, a local mobster, because of a smart remark he made on his show, so Larry heads over to Frenchy's hotel to apologize, taking a gun loaned to him by his valet Alex (Willie Best) for protection. Staying on the same floor is Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard) who is about to sail to Cuba to claim her estate, a supposedly haunted castle on Black Island. A seemingly benign man named Parada (Paul Lukas) tries to talk her out of going, offering to buy the land, but she is warned by a Cuban named Ramon (Anthony Quinn) not to sell. In the hallway, Larry's gun goes off accidentally and at the same moment, someone shoots and kills Ramon—Larry thinks it was his fault so he hides in Mary's streamer trunk to avoid the police. Of course, he hits it off with Mary and winds up accompanying her to Cuba even though he finds out from Alex that the gun he had was not responsible for Ramon's death. In Havana, they meet up with Geoff (Richard Carlson), an old friend of Mary's who counsels her to sell the castle, and the cast is now complete for a night of spooky hijinks on Black Island where they see a zombie, a ghost, huge cobwebs, strange sounds, the apparent resurrection of Ramon, and discover that there may be a treasure hidden somewhere on the estate.

As horror-comedies go, this is one of the best, though modern audiences may find it difficult to get past the demeaning stereotypes embodied in the African-American Willie Best—it must be said that, though his performance feels quite dated, he has very good comic chemistry with Hope. Hope was in his prime in the 40s, though if he's not your cup of tea, avoid this because he’s in practically every scene. The first 15 minutes, set in New York, are actually more fun than the haunted house proceedings in Cuba, partly because it's a very different sequence than you're likely to find in most ghost movies; my favorite line in the movie occurs early on, when, during the storm, Hope quips, "Basil Rathbone must be giving a party." I suspect this was intended by Paramount as an unofficial sequel to Hope & Goddard's earlier spooky film THE CAT AND THE CANARY. Both are fun, though this one has more energy. The movie feels like it just stops rather than ends logically—a few loose threads are left loose, like the island's resident zombie (Noble Johnson) and the apparently real ghost of an ancestor that Hope and Best see in the castle (the castle set, BTW, is very cool). Lukas and Carlson are mostly wasted in parts that feel like they were bigger in an earlier screenplay draft and got cut down. But overall, this is fun, and you could do worse than a double feature of this and CANARY for Halloween viewing. [DVD]