Sundays With The Boys: Hold That Ghost

It's mid 1941 and the boys are back in their 4th film (even though it was shot third). The film starts off with the boys as replacement waiters in a nightclub where we get the film off to an unfortunately awkward start watching Ted Lewis singing "Me and My Shadow" while being shadowed by an African American dancer. It is our 21st Century vantage point that makes this odd, but Lewis was one of the first prominent entertainers to employ African American performers (he started in the late 1920s) and things recover quickly with a quick routine between the boys and a number by the Andrew Sisters (for the third and last time in an Abbott & Costello film) before the plot proper gets under way.  The boys get mixed up with a gangster named Moose Matson who gives them his last will & testament bequeathing an old tavern to those with him at his time of death (the boys). Lots of hijinks ensue as the boys (and an odd collection of other "bus" passengers stranded with them) spend the night in the mobster's spooky Tavern.

The film has a number of self referential moments. The boys know they're in a "haunted house" and point out some of the tropes of the genre just before they actually happen (and it helps that one of the other passengers is a "famous" radio actress, played by Joan Davis, who is only known for her screaming). Some of the highlights of the film are a dance routine between Lou and Davis set to the "Blue Danube", Lou and the bedroom that changes into a casino and the Moving Candle routine.

This is, for me, the funniest of their early movies. The boys' routines seem to be blended into the plot better (instead of still feeling like they were dropped in) and the plot actually seems to move from point A to point B (instead of meandering around a basic concept).

Hold That Ghost has appeared on VHS, Laser Disc (as a double feature with The Time of Their Lives) and DVD twice (first as part of "The Best of Abbott and Costello Volume 1" and then as part of "Abbott and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection"...both versions contain a jovial and informative commentary by film historian Jeff Miller who also watched the boys on WPIX out of NYC).

Next week: Keep 'em Flying.

Be seeing you.