Fantômes déchaînés

One's the first picture that I'd ever seen at theatre was from this outstanding couple, which I didn't remember the name, well-known here in Brazil fondly as "the Fat and the Thin" in this picture our friends are hired to takes a coffin to another city by train, the coffin was swapped on railway station, actually inside has a living crook who is at large from the police.

Forgetting a bit the plot, there are some many gags around, they were misled by a couple of crooks who sold to them a machine that make oversized money, so they made a spensive dinner, but the machine didn't work out, more trouble ahead, arriving in the town they got a job with a great magician, but they are pursued by the coffin's gang.

These remarkable duo comics had a successful box-office here and TV as well, their DVD are available with an original dubbed version, all in my collection !!!

Resume:

First watch: 1991 / How many: 4 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.

Because of this Laurel and Hardy film's poor reputation, I decided to watch this with Scott MacGillivray's commentary first before seeing it without. With the commentary, I appreciated many of the visual gags like various accidents from Stan's umbrella or the entire rope trick with Stan rising and falling with it depending on Ollie's playing or not of the clarinet. Of note is that Sheila Ryan appears in her second L & H movie a year after her first with the boys, Great Guns. Also, a couple of men who bilk Stan and Ollie on the train, Richard Lane and Robert Emmett Keane, would subsequently appear with them on The Bullfighters (Lane), The Dancing Masters (Keane), and Jitterbugs (Keane). Anyone interested in African-American comics of the '40s will probably want to check this one out to see both Mantan Moreland and Wille Best as waiters on a train though Mantan makes more of an impression here when he laughs at the boys' obviously fake money they thought was real because of the machine they saw Lane and Keane make different dollar bills from that they bought. As a fan of It's a Wonderful Life, it was certainly a treat for me to see Frank Faylen (Ernie the taxi driver) try to throw L & H off the train. While Stan and Ollie do provide plenty of laughs especially in a scene concerning two telephone booths from Dante the Magician that provide some nice double exposure of them, the gangster scenes, with one of them being Elisa Cook, Jr. of The Maltese Falcon, are mostly too serious to suit a Laurel and Hardy flick. That lion segment with them was funny though. Compared to the boys' Hal Roach output, this Fox entry doesn't come close quality-wise but A-Haunting We Will Go shouldn't be considered bottom-of-the barrel either. P.S. One of the children that was admiring Dante on the train was Terry Moore, who later became the leading lady on Mighty Joe Young.

Laurel and Hardy are bamboozled into smuggling a gangster, disguised as a corpse in a coffin, from one city to another but complications arise when the coffin is switched with a coffin used in a magician's act. This film, produced by Twentieth Century Fox, doesn't approach the charm of even their weakest feature produced by the Hal Roach Studios, but I don't think this is necessarily Laurel and Hardy's worst film. There are a few laughs, sporadic as they may be. The main problem is that the comedy is too generic, it doesn't grow out of the personas they painstaking developed over the years. One could just as easily imagine Abbott and Costello or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby doing the Indian Rope trick gag. The production values are better than the Roach films, but production value is a poor substitute for comedy. The predicament can be summed up in the casting. In this film the boys are menaced by Elisha Cook, Jr.. Don't get me wrong. I think Elisha Cook, Jr., is an terrific supporting actor, but against Humphrey Bogart, not Laurel and Hardy. The boys are better menaced by a comic heavy like Walter Long.

Still, although many Laurel and Hardy fans castigate Fox and MGM for their treatment of the duo during the 1940s, I don't honestly see how it could have been much different anywhere in Hollywood. Laurel and Hardy were products of the 1920s and 1930s, the golden age of screen comedy. The 1940s were the nadir of comedy. By the time "A Haunting We Will Go" hit the screens in 1942, all of the greats were all essentially gone. Chaplin was inactive, and never returned to the comedy which made him great. Harold Lloyd had retired. Buster Keaton's career was in ruins. W.C. Fields' career was over. The Marx Brothers' film career was essentially over. Even the Ritz Brothers only had two more films in them. When you look at Laurel and Hardy in the context of their peers, it is a great testimony to their popularity that their film career continued as long as it did. The 1940s would forever belong to Abbott and Costello and Bob Hope, the likes of whom would make some funny films, but decade never had the comic vitality of the 1930s.

Few names in comedy are as iconic as those of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Though not all their works were equal, by and large they stood alongside contemporaries like Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and The Three Stooges with a steady stream of gags, physical comedy, situational humor, witty repartee, and not least the terrific dynamics between the stars. It speaks well to this 1942 title that it starts strong with a good few laughs, and at its best 'A-haunting we will go' is right on par with the duo's best films. It's not necessarily entirely perfect compared to others among their oeuvre, but it's hard to go wrong with Laurel and Hardy, and this ample demonstration of why they continue to be held in such esteem.

The shenanigans are reliably delightful at all times, and the nature of the plot in this instance allows for some flavors that are unique from those the legends' other pictures. One problem that this feature does distinctly have is that it's a tad imbalanced, for there is a lot of story packed into these sixty-six minutes as two hobos get mixed up with gangsters, and then a touring illusionist. Wherever that narrative receives focus the pacing is dragged down a bit, and the entertainment in turn, all the way through to the very end. On a like note, there's no disputing that "Dante the Magician" is a great showman and a fine addition to the roster for this flick; nevertheless, devoting a bit of the short runtime to his own antics further diminishes the screen time for Stan and Ollie. One consequence of our stars being shoved into a corner is that 'A-haunting we will go' feels less and less like a Laurel and Hardy flick, and more ordinary, alongside other 40s fare.

In fairness, these issues are less prominent in the back end as all the facets converge, and with that especially in mind - overall the movie is so fun, with the latter half making up for earlier issues, that we begin to forget about any troubles we recognized in the first place. All those stunts and effects that are employed are fantastic across the board, with some being even more complicated than what we've seen elsewhere with these two. Aspects like the sets, costume design, and hair and makeup are lovely, too, as they help flesh out the whole. Writers Lou Breslow and Stanley Rauh whipped up a swell tale to propel the silliness, and all the scene writing and bits are terrifically sharp and smart. Alfred L. Werker's direction ties all the moving parts together well, with some buzzing energy - though his task is certainly made easier with a splendid ensemble who do much of the heavy lifting themselves. Laurel and Hardy carry much of the title, by all means, but the big supporting cast easily rises to the occasion, with Dante and George Lynn easily standing out, among others.

All told I'd stop short of calling this a total must-see; in the very least, there are other films from the pair that I'd suggest more highly, including 'Saps at sea' and 'Swiss miss.' Even at that, whatever subjective faults one might reasonably assess against this ultimately turn out to seem pretty minor relative to how fabulously enjoyable it is otherwise. Whether you're a fan of the stars or really just looking for a good time you'll unmistakably find it here, and for the level at which the icons mostly operated, the minutiae don't particularly matter. 'A-haunting we will go' is another classic comedy from Laurel and Hardy, and I'm pleased to give it my hearty recommendation!

Laurel and Hardy agree to transport a coffin containing a corpse. But after it becomes mixed up with a stage magician's coffin, Stan and Ollie end up as magician's assistants and find themselves entangled with gangsters who were smuggling one of their number in the coffin.

This is often unfairly dismissed as a turkey. It isn't one of L & H's greatest films, but it contains plenty of memorable points including a hilarious Indian rope trick as well as the duo being fooled into buying a 'money-making machine', Ollie hiding in a box which turns out to be a stage prop used in the 'death of 1000 cuts' trick. Dante the magician is an interesting character, the plot is well-written and there are some imaginate sets.

As I said, it's not one of L & H's best, but it's still a classic and certainly more than worth watching.

8 out of 10