Ghost Catchers

Olsen and Johnson never achieved widespread success in films...they were definitely niche comics. When I've seen their films recently, I was surprised by this as I think some of their films are every bit as good as the best comedies of the era...especially "Helzapoppin". In many ways, they were a bit like Abbott and Costello combined with the zaniness of the very early Marx Brothers films (before they came to MGM and were given MUCH tamer material). Is "Ghost Catchers" among the team's better films?

Early in the film I noticed some good things and some bad. On the good side, Olsen and Johnson are given good support with the likes of Walter Catlett, Lon Chaney Jr., Leo Carillo and Andy Devine. Also, the film is weird....something you want in their films. But on the negative, the comics are stuck with lots of unnecessary and comedy-killing musical numbers. This wasn't uncommon in this era.... Abbott and Costello's early films had singing from the Andrews Sisters and the Marx Brothers always provided their own musical number. But the numbers in "Ghost Catchers" really were pretty dull and really derailed the comics' momentum...plus there was just too much singing. For this reason alone, I much prefer "Hellzapoppin".

As for the plot, a woman and her father have rented a place that ends up being haunted. The rental agent won't budge when they refuse to stay...demanding they honor the lease. So Olsen and Johnson arrive with some friends to try to drive away the ghosts...and there really DO seem to be some ghosts!

The film has laughs...but just too many musical numbers for my taste. Still, it is funny and has the weird sense of humor fans of the team enjoy....well worth your time.

While some of the reviews here are raves for this film, I am firmly in the opposite camp. I find comedy duos like Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello very funny even today, but Olsen and Johnson are not. Their shtick may have played better in the 40s, however, I don't think it works in this movie at all. Part of the problem is that the paper thin plot seems to take a back seat to far too many musical and comedy interludes. The songs aren't memorable and neither are the slapstick bits. I found the duo's antics insufferable and I didn't care who the killer was by the end.

As a Universal genre completist, I'm glad I finally got to view this little seen film, but I would never put myself through watching it again. Stick with the far better Hold That Ghost from Abbott and Costello, or Ghost Breakers with Bob Hope. 2 1/2 stars.

Olsen and Johnson did four pictures for Universal, with diminishing returns each time. Hellzapoppin is an underrated masterpiece. Crazy House was fun but a big step down from Hellz. Then this one which feels like a pedestrian Abbott and Costello knock-off. They even reference that more successful Universal comedy duo in one of the film's meta jokes. Olsen and Johnson were basically a blend of A&C, Hope & Crosby, and the Marx Bros. I'm no film historian so I won't say who was first at any of the comedy devices employed by these teams. I do know who was best, at least onscreen, and it wasn't this pair. That being said, I have enjoyed their movies.

They aren't the biggest issue here anyway. The problem is the lame musical numbers. This is a common complaint today about many comedies from back then. The studios didn't seem to trust a comedy to sustain itself so they added romantic subplots and musical numbers. The best comedies rose above but this is not the best. The supporting characters are duds with some truly horrendous accents going on ("I'm a little sick of side pork and chitlins honey chile"). Lon Chaney Jr. Is wasted here in a throwaway goon role at a time he was the star of their monster films. The funniest scene in the movie involves "a horse." It's really not great but also not unwatchable. I feel like it's one of those movies I'm being too harsh on and after some repeat viewings I might feel better about it.

Olsen and Johnson are as wild as the Marx Brothers here, but too often they play second fiddles in their own movie; there is far, far too much singing which will turn off approximately 19 out of 20 viewers today (keep the FF button handy). There appear to be no decent-quality copies of this film in circulation, so that's another thing that restricts viewing and sounding pleasure. But don't miss the scene where O & J openly discuss Abbott and Costello's "Hold That Ghost"! This whole movie could be a fever dream. ** out of 4.

1944's "Ghost Catchers" remains a seldom seen musicomedy from Universal's busy wartime era, the third of four titles made there by the almost forgotten team of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. As near as I can figure, the pair were so similar in appearance that you can only tell them apart by the fact that Olsen was taller, with Johnson most often howling at his own antics. While I truly enjoyed their previous feature, 1943's "Crazy House," I was frankly bored with this one, way too much music taking up screen time for the first half of a brief 67 minute film that seemed much longer. They had only one interesting moment, a little dig at Abbott and Costello (done before in "Crazy House"), who had a huge success with 1941's "Hold That Ghost," one of their finest films (the same running figures used during the opening credits for both features). Here, we have a Southern Colonel (Walter Catlett) and his two singing daughters (Gloria Jean and Martha O'Driscoll), who rent a house haunted by a tap dancing ghost, played in his one sequence by perennial drunk Jack Norton. While the invisible spectre is not malevolent, there are others trying to scare away our protagonists, even murdering the caretaker (Alec Craig); gangsters hoping to make off with their hootch. The two most noticeable crooks are Lon Chaney (in a bear costume) and Andy Devine (in a horse's head), while cult favorite Tor Johnson can be spotted among the rest (among the musical guests are Morton Downey and drummer Mel Torme). While Devine gets to indulge a little, poor Chaney is completely wasted, enjoying better roles in his forthcoming Abbott and Costello movies. A better ounce of trivia involves the criminal mastermind wearing one of Chaney's Mummy masks (looking most like the one from the still forthcoming "The Mummy's Curse"). The adorable Gloria Jean does get to show off why she was Deanna Durbin's main competition at Universal, and lovely Martha O'Driscoll would see more of Lon Chaney the following year, in "Here Come the Co-eds" (with Abbott and Costello), "The Daltons Ride Again," and her most famous credit, "House of Dracula." Olsen and Johnson would do one more feature in 1945, "See My Lawyer," before returning to the stage, where they continued performing for the rest of their days (Bela Lugosi appeared in one of their early talkie films, 1931's "50 Million Frenchmen," shot in two strip Technicolor).