El castillo maldito

Larry Todd (Dean Martin), and Myron Mertz (Jerry Lewis) run a foul of gangster "Shorty" and are forced to flee the hotel when suspicion of murder falls on Larry. Hooking up with heiress Mary Carroll (Lizabeth Scott) who is sailing for Cuba, the guys find that Cuba is one mysterious place, full of weird goings on and Zombies!

Scared Stiff was Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis' ninth picture, a remake of Paramount's 1940 comedy spooker, The Ghost Breakers that starred Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard, it's also directed by the same man, George Marshall. Though both Lewis and Martin are on record as saying they didn't want to remake The Ghost Breakers since the Hope movie was fine the way it is. The guys were bound to do it by their Paramount contract, and thus producer Hal B. Wallis, rightly assuming that it was viable material for the duo, got the film made.

In the pantheon of Martin/Lewis films, Scared Stiff ranks as one of the better efforts that the guys did. Larks and songs and a Carmen Miranda cameo make up the main body of Scared Stiff. Standard slap-stick to none fans of the intrepid duo, but essential viewing for those that have a kink for such shenanigans. From a ventriloquist dummy skit to Lewis' delightful take on Miranda, and containing an hilarious sequence with Jerry stuck in a trunk, there's enough guffaws to keep the grin on ones face. Fans of the singing side of Deano are however short changed here, and there is no getting away from the fact that Scared Stiff is ultimately a rushed cash in job. So with that in mind newcomers to the pair are advised to possibly give the film a miss and head for the likes of Artists And Models and Hollywood or Bust instead. 7/10

Scared Stiff (1953)

** (out of 4)

Nightclub singer Larry Todd (Dean Martin) and busboy Myron Mertz (Jerry Lewis) find themselves being hunted down by a gangster after they witnessed a murder. With the help of Mary (Lizaebth Scott) the two are able to get on board a cruise ship where they land in Cuba and before long they're in a haunted house.

Every comedy duo, at some point in their career, had to face horror elements. Laurel and Hardy. Abbott and Costello. Dean and Martin got their chance here in this remake of the 1940 Bob Hope film THE GHOST BREAKERS. For my money this isn't a very good movie and I thought it fell well short of that 1940 movie on a variety of levels but the biggest is the fact that there's really no story here.

We're basically introduced to the two men, we see them get in trouble with the gangsters, there's a romance between Martin and Scott and then we get to the horror elements. The problem is that the lack of story means that the 107-minute running time really drags to the point where I was bored out of my mind. Even worse is the fact that the story was so weak that it wouldn't have supported a sixty-minute movie from Monogram let alone something this long. For the life of me I couldn't understand why we were a hour into the picture and there still wasn't really anything going on.

As far as Martin and Lewis go, both are in fine shape playing the type of characters they were well familiar with. Lewis is that obnoxious clown who can't get out of trouble and often finds himself turning one bad situation into something worst. Martin gets to sing a couple numbers and do his romance thing and for the most part he's one of the highlights of the film. As for Scott, I personally found her to be a bit too bland in the part and there just wasn't any spark between her and Martin. There's a great cameo at the end but I won't spoil it for people.

SCARED STIFF is a pretty bland movie that has a few funny moments but certainly not enough to keep the running time from dragging on and on.

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).

I know its now the 22nd of May 2006, but this film sticks in my memory. I first saw the great Comedy team Dean & Jerry way back in 1953 and this was the film I watched one rainy afternoon in a town called Walsall in Staffordshire, England. I was playing truant from school actually. But I remember laughing so much at Jerry Lewis that I was almost weeping. The film is a re-make of the Bob Hope vehicle The Ghost Breakers (1940) and even uses the same sets. The antics of the two are brilliant, and the business they work together is truly UNIQUE. I think that Jerry and Dean were the funniest of the teams of that era. I suppose that's why they were the highest paid duo in the world! Jerry wrote a lot of the visual gags, the scene where he is stuck in the trunk, and comes out doubled over, and the scenes in the Haunted castle with Jack Lambert as THE ZOMBIE likewise brilliant. Dean was a great foil for Jerry and Jerry was a great stooge for Dean. As I write Dean has gone, but Jerry is still with us at 80 years of age. Superb Film, superb and clean comedy. I recommend SCARED STIFF to you all.