Morti di paura

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.

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.

First of all, if you're considering watching a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis picture, you must be aware of the fact that it is mainly slapstick comedy. If you can't laugh at a drunk guy slapping Jerry Lewis in the face, then this movie isn't for you.

With that being said, this movie has an interesting story line. Lewis and Martin are friends and when Martin gets in trouble with Shorty, a mob-type guy, Lewis goes to defend him. This leads to an accidental shooting that Martin gets blamed for and when he goes to hide, he meets Mary, who inherited a haunted island from her father. Martin and Lewis end up going with Mary and figure out the mystery of Lost Island.

Although the plot jumps around a lot, watching Martin and Lewis is always enjoyable and there are many funny situations in this movie. If you're a fan of slapstick, this movie is for you.

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.

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).