Three old men (Charles Winninger, C. Aubrey Smith and Harry Carey), with nothing to do for Christmas, toss three wallets into the snow, hoping that whoever finds them will return them and stay for dinner. It works in two cases, reeling in a young girl and a down-on-his-luck Texan (Richard Carlson) who find each other attractive. The five become close, but the three old men die in a plane crash, leaving their ghosts to watch the young couple fall apart.
There is a lot of potential here; it is also creepy. The Dickens’ oriented Christmas cheer is visible, but a lighter hand was needed to make it come to life. The first part works nicely as the focus is on the peculiarities of the elderly men. Watching excellent character actors like Smith, Winninger, and Carey is always worth the time. Plus, there is Maria Ouspenskaya (the gypsy woman in The Wolf Man) as a servant, an actress that makes any picture better.
But things go wrong quickly when the older actors take a back seat to the younger ones. The love story is neither romantic nor thoughtful. And the film takes a cruel twist for a feel-good Christmas flick. It is fairly vicious toward one of the characters, a starlet who gets in the way of the romance. It turns out she has no soul at all simply because she’s a starlet. On this world view, might I suggest a simple farming life is the way to go.
The afterlife is a strange place, with rather strict rules. But the rules can all be broken because God is easily influenced. Someone just has to ask. I guess the lesson here is make sure you have a friend who can ask God to fix things because God won’t do it on his own. This is not an afterlife I’d like to see.
Outside of asking God for favors, there isn’t much for a ghost to do, which is disappointing in a fantasy film filled with ghosts.
Also known as Beyond Christmas.