The Ghost Goes West **** (1935, Robert Donat, Eugene Palette, Jean Parker, Elsa Lanchester) – Classic Movie Review 7190

Robert Donat, Eugene Palette, Jean Parker and Elsa Lanchester all shine brightly in writer-director René Clair’s now creaky seeming but still deliciously enjoyable 1935 fanciful fantasy comedy The Ghost Goes West, with more charm and high spirits than actual laughs.

Palette stars as a rich American businessman who purchases a Scottish castle stately home from an impoverished Scottish lord (Donat), then dismantles it and ships it home brick by brick to the United States, but the place’s hundreds-or-so year old ghost (Donat too) goes West along with his home and starts haunting.

The Ghost Goes West is still a delight, though it is odd material for the great French director Clair working in England, but then again it is a cousin of his 1942 American film I Married a Witch. Chili Bouchier plays the spirit of Cleopatra in a supporting role in one of her few films of any consequence.

René Clair writes the screenplay from the story Sir Tristram Goes West by Eric Keown. Harold Rosson shoots in black and white.

Also in the cast are Ralph Bunker, Patricia Hilliard, Morton Selten, Hay Petrie, Everley Gregg, Mark Daly, Herbert Lomas, Elliot Mason, Jack Lambert, Colin Leslie, Richard Mackie, J Neil More, Neil Lester, Quinton McPherson, Arthur Seaton and David Keir.

It was was Britain’s highest-grossing film of 1936.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7190

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