Murdoch Glourie (Robert Donat) of the clan Glourie dies a ignoble death and is cursed by his father to exist as a ghost until he can humiliate a member of the clan MacClaggan. Two hundred years later, Donald Glourie (also Robert Donat) is forced to sell Glourie castle to a crude American businessman (Eugene Pallette) who ships it stone by stone to Florida.
I saw The Canterville Ghost (1944) long before The Ghost Goes West and I can’t but think of this film as a weak version of the other. The ghost plot is the same, as is the comparison between the long history of our friends across the pond with American obnoxiousness. But where all that is funny and emotional in the Canterville Ghost, here it is placid. The jokes are OK, but didn’t raise a chuckle from me. The emotions are simply absent.
Of course, since The Ghost Goes West was first, it is the one that set the precedent. The latter film took as much from the earlier one as it did from Oscar Wilde’s play, so I have to give it credit for that. Otherwise, it’s hard to give it credit of any kind. It isn’t bad, just ho hum. Pallette is good, as always, but if you want to watch him, might I suggest The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Mark of Zorro or My Man Godfrey. I did enjoy the cameo by a youngish Elsa Lanchester because I always enjoy her.
There’s a romantic sub-plot that doesn’t go anywhere and should either have been dropped or greatly expanded. The girl confuses the ghost with the man, but that causes surprisingly few problems and any true romance is absent.
Director Rene Clair also made the much better genre film, I Married A Witch.