"Basil Rathbone must be having a party."

"I'm still 11 years old when it comes to the 4th of July, circuses and haunted castles."

Though it's primarily more ado about zombies than ghosts, the Bob Hope vehicle THE GHOST BREAKERS (1940), which reunited the rubber-faced funster with his THE CAT AND THE CANARY (1939) costar Paulette Goddard, at least has a ghost in it and buckets of atmosphere to boot. Hope is in top flight form as New York radio star Lawrence L. Lawrence ("The middle initial stands for Lawrence - my folks had no imagination."), in Dutch with the local mafiosi (led by Paul Fix) and accused of a murder (of Anthony Quinn!) he didn't commit. Hopping the first steamer out of town, Larry finds himself not only bound for exotic Cuba but paired by circumstance with pretty young heiress Mary Carter (Goddard), whose inheritance of a purportedly haunted island castle is attracting all kinds of unsolicited attention, from the grim warnings of the urbane but sinister Parada (Paul Lukas), who claims to represent the Cuban consulate, to the rico suave ministrations of handsome Geoff Montgomery (Richard Carlson), an acquaintance of Mary's who proves himself useful for knowing a bit about Haitian voodoo. Backed by his jittery manservant Alex (Willie Best), Larry appoints himself as Mary's protector ("My advice is keep the castle and sell the ghosts") in hopes of winning her affection by getting to the bottom of the mystery of Castello Maldito.

Paramount had twice before filmed silent versions of the Paul Dickey and Charles Goddard (no relation) play The Ghost Breaker (the first, in 1914, was codirected by Cecil B. DeMille), which had enjoyed a brief run at New York's Lyceum Theater in the spring of 1913. Paramount ordered the material dusted off by CAT AND THE CANARY scribe Walter DeLeon (who had adapted the material previously for the 1922 go-round starring Wallace Reid and featuring the mighty Arthur Edmund Carewe of DOCTOR X and MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM fame in a supporting role) and toploaded with one liners for Old Ski Nose. People looking back at THE GHOST BREAKERS at the distance of almost 70 years often carp that the film isn't as funny as Hope's "road pictures" (which began that year) with Bing Crosby but one of the reasons it works so well in my estimation is that a good deal of the spookery is played straight... well, as straight as can be, given the fact that Hope and Willie Best (a hoot, as usual) are doing the ghost breaking.

The ghost in the machine here is a routine double exposure who pops up rather late in the game but genuine horripilations are evoked by zombie Noble Johnson (above), who skulks around the castle and chases our protagonists hither and yon, as a proper zombie should. The 6'2", 215 lb. African-American filmmaker had with his two brothers founded a production company in 1916 to make features more agreeable to Negro audiences than Hollywood could manage; until the Lincoln Motion Picture Company folded in 1921, Johnson paid the bills playing exotics of every stripe in such films as 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1916), LOVE AFLAME (1917) and Rex Ingram's THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921). Johnson's work just prior to and just beyond the advent of sound include bits in Raoul Walsh's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924), as the Devil himself in Henry Otto's DANTE'S INFERNO (1924), as Queequeg to John Barrymore's Captain Ahab in Lloyd Bacon's MOBY DICK (1930) and as the native chief in KING KONG (1933). Always a happy addition to any classic film, Johnson is characteristically great here, as pathetic as he is truly fearsome as lurches after the heroes with one leg dragging behind him a la Kharis from Universal's "Mummy" series. (Johnson was a childhood friend of silent screen star Lon Chaney, although the two appeared in only one film together, WEST OF ZANZIBAR, in 1928.)

For reasons of political correctness, contemporary critics tend to be a little hard on THE GHOST BREAKERS, principally for the zingers Bob Hope bounces off the woolly head of Willie Best. Some of these are beyond the pale but most of the jokes are good natured and Best gives it back as much as he takes it. (For a particularly chowderheaded take on the film, click here. No, the critic doesn't have any insights or film history to impart but at least he isn't racist!) He and Hope are a great Mutt & Jeff pair of cowards; a year later, Paramount reteamed them with Paulette Goddard in Elliot Nugent's NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH (1941). The success of THE GHOST BREAKERS (twinned with the fat returns on THE CAT AND THE CANARY) spawned a host of horror comedies, of which HOLD THAT GHOST (1941) with Abbott and Costello was among the first. Although A&C got to go toe-to-toe with Count Dracula, the Wolfman, the Frankenstein Monster and (in the final frames) the Invisible Man in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1946), THE GHOST BREAKERS remains the horror comedy to beat. When George Marshall remade his original as SCARED STIFF (1953), he had the jokes rewritten to suit stars Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin but blithely reused much of the footage shot by Charles Lang for THE GHOST BUSTERS, which even after all these years remains a haunting thing of beauty.