This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. It's the third Thursday in October, so that means that we have another horror-themed edition of the blogathon. This time around, that theme is "comedic horror". I thought for a bit, and wound up picking three movies that are all variations on the "old dark house" theme:
The Cat and the Canary (1939). Relatives of a dead man, including Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, John Beal, and others, return to the man's house in the Louisiana bayous a decade after his death for the reading of his will, which gives all of his money to one person as long as that person is still alive and has not been declared insane one month from the reading. The will specifies Goddard's character, and unsurprisingly, pretty much everybody else in the movie tries to make Goddard go insane.
Murder, He Says (1945). Fred MacMurray plays a pollster trying to conduct a survey on the values of rural Americans. He's been given the job of contacting the last people known to have seen his colleague, a family whose daughter is in prison for bank robbery, with the rest at each other's throats trying to find the money they just know has to be buried on the property somewhere. And then the bank robber daughter breaks out of prison.
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966). Don Knotts plays the coward, a typesetter in a small Kansas town who decides to investigate whether the haunted house tales about one of the old houses in town where a murder occurred 20 years earlier are true. Unfortunately, Knotts' character is known for telling tall tales, so when he spends a night in the house and concludes the place is haunted, nobody believes him. But why does the owner not want the story to be told?
6 comments:
Nice choices and we share a theme within the theme.
The Cat and the Canary is a pleasant diversion. It's surprising how well Hope and Paulette Goddard pair, considering each performers persona it doesn't seem they would mesh as well as they do.
Murder, He Says was a surprise. It was one I tracked down when I was trying to become more familiar with Fred MacMurray's earlier work (he really was quite an adroit light comic performer) and it was quite the nutty enterprise but a decent picture with the benefit of having Helen Walker as his romantic interest. It wasn't as good as another discovery from around the same period-Pardon My Past-but worth seeing.
Don Knotts was such a distinctive personality but he found his niche as the quivering but good-hearted snook and his brief film career has several funny flicks that exploited that to the limit. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken certainly provides him the necessary vehicle for his gifts.
As I said we share our subtheme and I also chose one of the other costarring ventures of Hope and Goddard.
Hold That Ghost (1941)-Inheriting a mobster’s dilapidated country tavern rumored to contain hidden treasure through an odd set of circumstances Chuck Murray and Ferdie Jones (Abbott & Costello) find themselves trapped there on a dark and stormy night. Along with some other stranded travelers the boys live through a night of wacky shenanigans including a ghost, hidden doors and a couple of vanishing detectives while looking for the loot. One of A&C’s better films, you even get a couple of musical numbers by The Andrews Sisters.
You’ll Find Out (1940)-Heiress Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish) books Kay Kyser (Kay Kyser) and his big band “The Kollege of Musical Knowledge” including singer Ginny Simms and Ish Kabibble to play her 21st birthday party at her country mansion. When an intense storm blows in the band finds themselves stuck along with Janis, her eccentric Aunt Margo (Alma Kruger) and trio of questionable “friends” professor Fenniger (Peter Lorre), Prince Soliano (Bela Lugosi) and Judge Mainwaring (Boris Karloff) as things go bump in the night. A trifle overlong but a chance to see three horror giants playing for laughs.
The Ghost Breakers (1940)-Inheriting a distant relative’s supposedly haunted castle of an isolated island off the Cuban coast young Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard) decides to take possession despite a stranger’s (Anthony Quinn) warning to stay away. Setting sail Mary finds radio announcer Larry Lawrence (Bob Hope), on the lam because he thinks he’s bumped off a gangster’s henchman, stowed away in her trunk. Amid pratfalls and wisecracks Mary & Larry team up to get to the bottom of the voodoo magic, zombies and ghosts that curse the spooky estate.
I can't say I've heard of any of these, but title wise, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is great.
OMG! We Match with The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. I love that silly comedy. I almost chose your first pick which is a good telling of the silent film. I have not seen the Fred McMurray film.
TCM runs the Kay Kyser movies occasionally, but I don't think I've ever gotten around to watching any of them.
As for The Ghost Breakers, it's on the same disk in my Bob Hope box set as The Cat and the Canary, but I haven't gotten to that disk yet. College Swing was on the top disk which is why I did a post on that one recently.
Don Knotts certainly isn't to everyone's taste, but The Ghost and Mr. Chicken works pretty well.
I haven't seen - or indeed heard of - these films before but The Ghost and Mr. Chicken sounds quite entertaining.
Murder He Says sounds really cool - I'll need to check that one out :-D
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