Ann Carrington (Carole Landis) and her sarcastic friend Gail Richards (Joan Blondell) arrive at the Carrington estate for Ann to be reunited with her sick father (H.B. Warner). He is looked after by sinister butler Rama (Trevor Bardette), more sinister housekeeper Lillian (Rafaela Ottiano), and extremely sinister live-in doctor Jeris (George Zucco). Gail is murdered mistakenly in place of Ann. Her ghost finds Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) and forces him, along with his cowardly chauffeur Edward (Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson) to go to the manner in search of her dead body, and then, her murderer. Soon the spooky house is visited by confused Mrs. Clara Topper (Billie Burke), her maid (Patsy Kelly), heroic taxi driver Bob (Dennis O’Keefe), and the police, lead by Detective Roberts (Donald MacBride).
Hey, what do you know: It’s an Old Dark House film where the ghost isn’t someone in a costume attempting to scare off those darn kids. There’s an actual ghost. She isn’t scary, but she is a ghost.
The charming screwball comedy Topper ended such that a sequel was both unwanted and detrimental. Naturally they made one: Topper Takes a Trip, which was a mildly amusing copy of the original. For this third entry, they took an Old Dark House mystery and shoehorned in Topper, dialing the horror down and the comedy up. Without Topper, and the ghost, it is a pretty standard Old Dark House film: there are secret passageways, revolving walls, chairs with trap doors, and a robed killer. There’s even the traditional screaming female and he-man male leads. But since most of the time is spent with Topper and the ghost, the normal mystery isn’t given time to develop. And since that mystery is the story, there’s no reason for Topper to be in the film. It’s strange writing (when Bob Hope was stuffed into The Cat and the Canary, they replaced a needed character with his so he’d be a part of the story). I feel sorry for Dennis O’Keefe, who would normally have played the lead and I have to wonder if in some early draft of the script, Topper is missing and Bob is the lead.
Unfortunately the humor rarely comes from the situations, except for the slapstick of Edward repeatedly falling into the sea. It is either amplified bits from the first film (Mrs. Topper is no longer a bit daffy; she’s suffering from dementia) or Joan Blondell making wisecracks. Neither of these are funny, but Blondell’s none-stop quips are a bigger problem as they are also annoying. As her character is also ridiculously stupid, she isn’t fun to have on screen. Blondell deserved better.
Rochester Anderson is my favorite of the Black actors who were stuck playing frightened, bug-eyed servants. He’s playing a racist stereotype, but he makes it a bit less racist than it might have been, and considerably less racist than Willie Best had been in a similar role in a the similar film The Ghost Breakers a year earlier; I guess that’s progress.
Topper Returns isn’t a bad film. No one put enough thought into it to make it bad. It’s a cheap cash grab with little effort put in by the producers and writers, and even Roland Young is looking pretty tired.