Film Review: The Ghost Breakers (dir. G. Marshall, 1940)

This Bob Hope-Paulette Goddard pairing is mildly amusing, in that 1930s comedy kind of way. Hope is famous for his comic timing, which basically consists of the responsive, quick one-liner and his ability to twist a sentence at the very end to say something different from what you thought he was going to say. So one character says something like, "A zombie has no will of its own; it can only follow commands," and Hope quips, "Of, you mean like Democrats." (1940 was a long time ago, eh?) Or Hope says (something like), "I don't mind dying, it's the preliminaries." But the movie is much more interesting in a sociological sense.

First, let me note that Hope's character, Lawrence Lawrence, has an African-American valet. This character serves mainly as comic relief; the actor playing him is probably as funny as Bob Hope, but because he's black, he's the valet, not the lead. And there are black jokes, too. Such as in the black-out, the joke is made that Bob Hope can't see his valet, even though the valet is standing right next to him. Egad.

Second, this movie exploits Paulett Goddard's sex appeal to the maximum extent possible in 1940. For one thing, there's a gratuitous scene of her in only her slip (and heels, of course, because we men know how much women like to prance around in lingerie and heels). For another, there's a scene of her in a one-piece bathing suit (one-piece, of course), but again, completely unnecessary for plot or character reasons. Remember the rules back then, particularly no cleavage (that's why there was such an emphasis on legs and tight sweaters). Here we get a long shot of Goddard's backless dress in one scene. I wouldn't say that this movie "pushes the envelope," but it is clearly designed to exploit Goddard's (fairly limited) sex appeal.

Third, the plot involves a haunted house in Cuba (really), and the story involves both voodoo and a zombie. The interesting thing is that the zombie is recognizably a zombie. If he was never identified as such, anyone familiar with movie portrayals of zombies would have no problem saying, with confidence, "That is a zombie." (Of course, this is a voodoo zombie rather than a flesh-eating, George Romero zombie.) So it's interesting how once a "creature" is defined, visually, that definition stays with us for a very long time.

I rented this because I was interested in getting a sense for Bob Hope's screen work. It's basically what I expected. Not that funny, but mildly amusing and entertaining, from a sociological point of view. There's a complex plot, a mystery, a number of shady characters, and a ghost. But I doubt anyone out there would be interested in any of that.