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Written by Mandroid3000
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GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE
*** out of *****
Genres
1943
Directed by
William Beaudine
Written by
Kenneth Higgins
Cast
Leo Gorcey .... Muggs McGinnis
Huntz Hall .... Glimpy Williams
Bobby Jordan .... Danny
Bela Lugosi .... Emil
Ava Gardner .... Betty Williams Gibson
Rick Vallin .... Jack Gibson
Ghosts on the Loose may feature both Bela Lugosi and Ava Gardner, but this is an East Side Kids movie (one of their four released in 1943). It's a straight comedy, mixing slapstick with endless puns and a complete lack of ghosts. It's frankly, kind-of stupid. But I found it amazingly entertaining.
FYI - The Eastside Kids started as characters in Sidney Kingsley’s play Dead End. After this was turned into a film in 1937 (co-starring Humphrey Bogart) they appeared in over 80 films (with their gang’s name changing several times). The last one (In the Money) came out in 1958.
Leo Gorcey plays Muggs McGinnis, the East Side Kid’s leader. He’s like a junior James Cagney, cocky and bossy, always with a scheme or angle, but clueless in a lot of ways (mainly pronounciation). Huntz Hall plays Glimpy, whose sister Betty (Ava Gardner) is getting married. Muggs helps organise the ceremony, though his orders don’t always get followed in a way he’d like. He sends some of the gang to get flowers, they steal a funeral wreath, the best man’s suit has to returned for its owner’s funeral, etc.
Betty’s husband Jack has bought a house out in the suburbs. But strange people try to convince him not to move out there. The East Side Kids don’t know anything’s wrong, and as a honeymoon surprise decide to do-up their house. But they got the wrong address, and start renovating the spooky house next door.
Here the film turns to the sort of humour that inspired Scooby-Doo (I mean this in a good way). The gang find Nazi propaganda in the basement. To protect Jack they move it into his actual house. When the cops show up they realise what they’ve done and sneak it back. But when they lead the cops in to look at it, the Nazis have snuck it back into the brother’s house again.
There are no ghosts in the movie. Bela Lugosi says “shit” once, and that’s about it. And there are a lot of really bad jokes. But after a rough build-up it gets pretty damn entertaining. It may not be sophisticated humour, but there’s something so endearingly goofy about Ghosts on the Loose and The East Side Kids that I didn’t really care.
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