Ghosts on the Loose (1943)

 

Director: William Beaudine

Screenplay: Kenneth Higgins

Cast: Leo Gorcey as Muggs McGinnis; Huntz Hall as Glimpy; Bobby Jordan as Danny; Bela Lugosi as Emil; Ava Gardner as Betty; Rick Vallin as Jack; Ernest Morrison as Scruno; William 'Billy' Benedict as Benny; Stanley Clements as Stash

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Remind me when we get into town to give you the Iron Cross for bravery...to your skull.

[Some Major Spoilers]

From b-movie kings Monogram Pictures, Ghosts on the Loose is part of a series of films with the "East Side Kids", a franchise which combined actors from the Dead End Kids, part of a group of young actors from New York City who appeared in Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Dead End in 1935, brought to Hollywood in 1937 by Samuel Goldwyn, and the Little Tough Guys, a group of actors who made a series of films and serials released by Universal Studios from 1938 through 1943. Over 22 films, made within 1940 to 1945, this was a franchise which was produced on mass by Monogram Pictures, with over thirty exact members in a variety of roles. This was not a troupe with everyone being the same each production, instead a representative of a band of boys who have their jokes and puns, here in this form beginning this film preparing to sing at one of their member's sister's wedding.

Said older sister is Ava Gardner, playing Betty, surprising to see her when she would be off a film like The Killers (1946) only some time later. This early in her career in a Monogram Pictures film shows everyone starts somewhere, and as much as you can tell how much she stands out, even in a William "One Shot" Beaudine production, she is as much just part of the cast as everyone. This also includes an older Bela Lugosi, in a wilderness period, taking work in these films after his golden one. All of them exist within a tale of Betty and her fiancée trying to get a house Bela Lugosi does not want them in, so there is already suspicious shenanigans afoot, decades before there would be a concern with the house even being on Elm Street. With the estate next door being apparently haunted, and the groom convinced to not go to the home after the wedding, the East Side Kids presume all they need to do is redecorate and head over.

The film is more comedy than horror, the latter entirely in how this is a haunted house scenario as Lugosi tries to scare them off. The humour at times has not aged, coming from this early forties b-picture time, having not travelled to ours with connections to what is humorous now. This is cruel to write, but is merely in mind that a lot of it is innocuous and not land even in terms of being funny in a modern context. Some of the humour is just innocuous in a more positive way, if not exceptional, be it the banter or someone deciding to cook the rice that is thrown at weddings first. Some jokes do land - such as stealing funeral wreaths for dead gangsters for the wedding, especially wreaths that were gifts from those who shot him and "did not" want to - this is a type of comedy based on the East Side Kids cast being goofs. They were clearly created to be humorous, to be able to sing, who do also struggle as a unit, and with most of them suffering from the group being too large for everyone to stand out, a motley team in a Monogram Pictures genre hybrid.

There is also many single takes of talking to tell the film cinematically, to the point it is not a William Beaudine thing, despite his infamous "One Shot" nickname, but also is what would presumably be the b-movie style of the time. This is instead not an infamous and prolific director showing a trademark, but that which is quick and efficient, pulp for sale and audience interest. In this case, very silly jokes are in the centre, from a seven dwarfs like group in the East Side Kids, even one who is sleepy all the time, if you replaced the leader with a wise guy who uses mock gangster lingo. Place them into a haunted house, and cash in on Bela Lugosi's legacy from Universal horror films, playing off his name recognition, and you get a film as a result. It is very silly. I have never seen someone, with the traditional joke of sweeping dust under a rug, be done instead under a cobweb, especially as they still stick the end of the web back down, or that most of the "haunted house" plot is merely to do with paintings, a Napoleon portrait that can revolve and show him without a coat and with one, or when the Bela Lugosi portrait sneezes and growls at you.

There was a huge concern, with one of the Kids being a young African American actor, Ernest Morrison, that he would be painted as a scaredy cat against the white cast, a trope from this era that actors like Mantan Moreland played in his career at this time. Thankfully, alongside doing a nice backwards fall stunt off a ladder onto a sofa, everyone in the group is a scaredy cat, all goofy in how they react to spooky things, be it one that literally climbs up the walls on top of a mounted moose head or the lead being so scared his hat flies off. Honestly only one joke feels of its era, and it is a weird one, even before it becomes the punch line for the film's ending. It is about catching German measles, in a World War II era film, which leads someone having black swastikas marked on his face. That definitely came from another period, but continuing in mind to this being a time capsule, you have a film, made when the United States entered the Second World War, that reflects when alongside being real enemies of the world, Nazi Germany could also be stock villains in these b-pictures and have strange punch lines like that one, alongside the main MacGuffin being a printing press and Nazi propaganda being made from it.

The film is, over only an hour, watchable, a public domain production which is more interesting for its quirks and as a cultural item of the past, for its many dated moments and for its curious nature. It is fascinating for what it is, a film coasting on horror tropes, in a comedy, which spends a lot of its time still being an adventure romp putting one over the Nazis, who barring the propaganda are incredibly vague goons ran by Lugosi. That, also from the director of Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966), in itself makes it a strange concoction, and certainly interesting.