Una herencia de miedo

A decade and a half earlier, Bob Hope made "Ghostbreakers"--an amiable little comedy. Now with "Scared Stiff" Martin & Lewis take their stab at remaking the film. As usual, Dean plays a lounge singer, Larry, though his character isn't the usual selfish guy he often played in their films. Jerry plays Myron, a clumsy (what else?) waiter. The pair end up running away from the nightclub where they work for two big reasons--Rosie (Dorothy Malone) keeps making eyes at Larry and her boyfriend is the VERY jealous and dangerous sort AND Larry thinks that he's killed a man! While on the run, they meet up with nice girl Mary (Lizabeth Scott) and they accompany her to an island she just inherited--Lost Island which is off the Cuban coast. Naturally, the place is supposedly haunted and zombies muck about the place.

This one works better than most Martin & Lewis films because horror is a very good theme for comedians of the day. In addition to Hope's "Ghostbreakers", Abbott & Costello had their best film with "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein"....and their other horror outings were better than average. An amiable film worth your time and a decent match to the team's talents.

Cool nightclub singer Larry Todd (Dean Martin) and bumbling busboy friend Myron Mertz (Jerry Lewis) are on the run from the mob and the police. Heiress Mary Carrroll (Lizabeth Scott) helps them escape to Cuba where she had recently inherited a haunted castle on an isolated island.

This Dean and Jerry doing their song and dance and comedy bits. I kinda expected to have more movie at the haunted mansion. Instead, they do take a long while to get there. I guess that this allows them to do more song and dance. The boys are good although not their best. Carmen Miranda does a couple. Sadly, it's her last movie before her premature death.

An authentic recital of these two great showmen in the Fifties. A nightclub showman : Dean Martin , and his colleague , a former botcher waiter : Jerry Lewis freeing a murder charge , going from New York to Cuba accompanying a rich heiress . This beautiful woman is named Mary Carter : Lizabeth Scott who has inherited her family's ancestral mansion on a small island of Cuba and decides to take possession .The three enter at the haunted house to find a lot of surprises as gangsters , ghosts and eventually hunting for a hidden treasure . They are making a spook-tacle of themselves ! They are funnier than ever on the Giant Panoramic Screen with Stereophonic Sound ! .

Fun and attractive comedy with humor , tongue-in-cheek, musical numbers and loads of entertainment and amusement, incliuing final cameos from Bing Crosby , Bob Hope . Close remake of Ghost Breakers 1940 with Paulette Goddard , Bob Hope and Scared stiff 1945 with Jack Haley , Anne Savage, taking parts here of there of these films . It you love Jerry Lewis this is a real vehicle as the extremely funny impersonation of Carmen Miranda , his game with a doppleganger at a mirror , his confrontation with menacing ghosts , zombies , armor, and anything else . This is one of the first and best appearances by the great Jerry Lewis , following a long career full of successes, such as : "3 Ring Circus , Artists and models, Hollywood or bust , Pardners , The Delicate Delinquent , The Geisha Boy , Cinderella , The Bellboy , The Ladies Man, The Nutty Professor , The Disorderly Orderly , The Parsy , The Family Jewels , The Big Mouth , Which Way to the Front ? , The King of Comedy" , and several others .

The motion picture was well directed by George Marshall , providing an amusing and entertaining film. Marshall was a prolific Hollywood professional who had a notable career including a large number of films such as : "Destry rides again , Off limits , Perils of Paulina , Goldwyn Follies , Texas , Pot O'Gold , Pack Up your Troubles , Papa's condition delicate , How the West was won , and some Laurel and Hardy vehicles" , among others . Rating 7/10 . Better than average . The movie will appeal to Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin fans .

Paramount once again rehashes another of their old hits for Martin and Lewis in Scared Stiff. In one respect Scared Stiff is an improvement over The Ghostbreakers that starred Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard back in the day. At least in this one Willie Best is not playing a horrible racial stereotype.

Other than that and to accommodate Best's role for Jerry Lewis and Hope's role for Dean Martin, it's not too much different from The Ghostbreakers. I have no doubt that producer Hal Wallis dug some of the old Paramount sets for the original out of mothballs for this one. The castle where the last twenty minutes are played looks way too much like the first film to be a duplicate.

Dino got shortchanged in the vocal department, the original songs by Mack David and Jerry Livingston yielded no hits for him. Jerry does a homage to Carmen Miranda who was around on the set to see it. This film marked her farewell screen appearance and I give her credit in that she doesn't let Martin and Lewis upstage her one bit.

Dorothy Malone had a small role as a chorus cutie and favorite of gangster Leonard Strong who was the reason why Dean and Jerry were fleeing to Cuba and got mixed up in Lizabeth Scott's troubles. Malone mentioned that she had recently lost a brother and that Dean personally asked she be cast in the part and helped her through the film. She always remembered his kindness. She also said that Dean and Jerry seemed to be quite cool to each other and the eventual breakup was no surprise to her.

The boys were lucky to have George Marshall who had directed The Ghostbreakers back in the day to also direct this one. If you liked the Bob Hope film, you'll probably like this one.

It even has an unbilled appearance of Bob Hope with another guy who sang a few songs for Paramount back in the day.

I'm a Jerry Lewis fan and I think Bob Hope's «The Ghost Breakers» (1940) was technically way ahead of its time as a funny/scary Old Dark House comedy. This thirteen-years-later remake feels like it was hatched together as a quickie Martin-Lewis vehicle in the «scary» mode (they made four films that year). It reuses the same director (George Marshall), most of the dialogue, most of the situations, most of the special effects, all the stock footage and even one song from the original. The sets have also been recreated and the jokes «updated». If the remake works at all, it is due to the extreme quality and originality of the first film. Comedy writer Norman Lear (of TV fame) did his best in adapting the Bob Hope/Willie Best routine to the particular talents of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Where the story starts to creak though is in the scary scenes. They have lost their suspense and mystery and that undefinable mix of editing, timing, lighting, photography, acting, pacing and music called «atmosphere», which «The Ghost Breakers» had in spades.

The casting is also lacking: Lizabeth Scott is no Paulette Goddard. She may look good in a bathing suit but her comedy is stilted, her romantic moods are too entranced and her dramatics don't convince. William Ching is no Richard Carlson, Paul Marion is no Anthony Quinn and George Dolenz is no Paul Lukas either. The zombie character is also a special disappointment all its own. Out of a misguided sense of political correctness, the original Black zombie (Noble Johnson) has been replaced by a nondescript White (!) cowboy villain (!!) (Jack Lambert) who actually looks like an ordinary Joe (!!!) without makeup (!!!!) from a distance. His entrance actually causes crickets to start chirping.

All in all, I appreciate this film as a kind of homage to the original, for its numerous Jerry Lewis set pieces, in which he exhibits a supreme self-confidence, and for the Dean Martin songs - despite the near-obscenity of the «Enchilada Man» number (you can imagine but don't ask!)... The less said about the Carmen Miranda numbers the better (this was her last film).