The Ghost Breakers (1940)

Thought I'd add a genuine comedy to my October reviews. No, this is not much of a predecessor to the Ghostbusters movie series or even the Filmation Ghostbusters TV series. Dialog indicates that this kind of "ghost breaker" merely attempts to debunk rumors of hauntings. In any case, this movie is adapted from a play that had already been made into two silents, so there had to be some appeal to the writing.

Lawrence (Bob Hope) has a radio show in which he reports on crimes. One such report gets him enough unwelcome attention to spark a series of antics, ultimately landing him and his valet, Alex (Willie Best), on a ship to Cuba, along with newly met Mary (Paulette Goddard). Mary's going to check out her inheritance of Castillo Maldito on nearby Black Island, said to be a haunted treasure trove. Lawrence decides to accompany her, partly because he finds her lovely and partly because some greedy soul is trying to scare her away from the estate, both with rumors of haunting and with more solid threats.

Before I go any further, let me address the elephant in the room. Alex appears to represent a stereotype that even racists no longer apply to African Americans: being easily scared. And as one of the three characters with the most screen time and lines, he's hard to ignore. Mercifully, his fearfulness is not over the top. He worries but never panics or makes a cowardly move, nor is he remarkably naive or foolish. Heck, I might relate more to him than to Lawrence. (Hope liked playing a brave guy for a change, but I had mixed feelings about that.)

I had assumed that a '40s comedy about investigating a reputedly haunted castle would look something like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Lonesome Ghosts, or a Scooby-Doo episode. Imagine my surprise at how little of the humor is physical. It's mostly wry turns of phrase. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mind it being less lowbrow than Road to Morocco, but without someone like Bing Crosby to bounce off, Hope just doesn't have much of a screwy dynamic going. Guess that points to the trouble with adaptations: They're not custom-made vehicles.

I was going to describe the film overall as "low-key," but maybe a better phrasing is "not fleshed out." You can tell that the editing was rather sloppy; one character who turns up repeatedly adds nothing to the plot or the mood, a certain ancestor of Mary's has a corpse in two places, and other aspects are rushed or left hanging. After 85 minutes, I thought, "Aw, is that it?" Furthermore, I felt that the picture could have been tightened up thematically; the early mob affairs lose all relevance, the phantasm business takes more than half the run time to put itself front and center, and then there are plenty of distractions with decidedly unghostly figures that pose much more obvious danger.

Yes, the dangers and supernatural elements (including a zombie in the voodoo tradition) are real as far as the story's concerned. I'm undecided on whether that's good or bad. The moments of action are rarely played for laughs. That might be for the best when the writer's sense of humor is tepid, but what levity there is might detract from the would-be thrills.

Maybe TGB captured a lot of imaginations in the first half of the 20th century, but it hasn't aged well. That seems to apply to Bob Hope in general.