It's possible that a better studio could have done something more with The Ghost And The Guest, but I think had this been done by someone with the comedic touch of Hal Roach the results might have been better.James Dunn and Florence Rice are a pair of newlyweds heading for their honeymoon dream house to spend the night. What they got was the hideout of an old gangster recently deceased courtesy of the state. Not only that, the late owner's corpse arrives by delivery for burial on the grounds of the estate.And then after that all kinds of friends and relatives and henchmen of the deceased arrive and the law and the body then disappears. You don't even have to wait an hour for it to be explained to you.This was a PRC release and that usually meant they vied with Monogram for cheapness of production. This one was a PRC product through and through. This film was the farewell performance of Florence Rice who found life and love outside the cinema on her third try and left the screen. She started with MGM, but now was reduced to PRC films. I guess she figured she wasn't leaving much. As for Dunn he was two years away from a comeback of sorts with A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.This also featured a really sickening performance from Sam McDaniel as Dunn's old family retainer.Still someone like Hal Roach could have made this work.

"A newlywed couple decides to spend their honeymoon at their new home, an old country cottage. The couple, along with their chauffeur, find themselves in the middle of a mystery when they are beset upon by a series of guests. A former executioner, a coffin, a gang of jewel thieves, and the police make for an interesting honeymoon for our newlyweds," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.Long before he worked on "The Alan Brady Show" (as documented on "The Dick Van Dyke Show") comedy writer Morey Amsterdam aka "Buddy Sorrell" scripted a few comedy movies. "The Ghost and the Guest" is a good example, albeit done dirt cheap. The tired "spooky old house" formula provides a sampling of the writer's one-liners, which sounded better elsewhere. Watch out for colliding actors.*** The Ghost and the Guest (4/19/43) William Nigh ~ James Dunn, Florence Rice, Sam McDaniel

Ghost and the Guest, The (1943) * 1/2 (out of 4) William Nigh directed "old dark house" flick about a newlywed couple who buys a farm house only to discover someone was recently murdered there and now the body has disappeared. I wasn't expecting too much out of this thing but got a lot less than I was hoping for. At 55-minutes you'd think this thing would at least fly by but it's pretty dry and slow. The horror elements are incredibly weak as is the mystery behind the body. The humor is even worse with some racial jokes about a local hangman who keeps threatening the black servant with hanging jokes. James Dunn takes the lead and is more annoying than anything else.

A newlywed couple spend their honeymoon in their "new" house instead of going to California. They are invaded by the police, a retired hangman, an escaped prisoner, a band of crooks and several dead bodies, all looking for something, either the crook or the loot hidden somewhere in the house. a humorous mystery follows.(or not). This is a bad movie.Almost enjoyable it instead misses the mark and falls flat. Written by Morey Amsterdam it plays more as a series of loosely connected sketches rather than as a film as a whole. There are a good number of exchanges that have nothing to do with whats going on in the story (they are funny but belong somewhere else). There is humor but the acting by the two leads is so broad and over the top that the film becomes annoying rather than amusing. I kept wishing that someone would kill the happy couple so that I wouldn't have to do it myself. The whole film looks cheap and the sets appear to wobble as people pass by. The direction is a mess. Even allowing for a cheapness that often allowed for only one camera set up (count how many scenes are essentially done in one take) this film has been put together by someone who seems to know nothing about how people really behave. Look at the scene where the bride to be is yapping away on the phone with her friends; do people really stand around like that in real life as one of their number talks non stop on the phone? Its like the most annoying sitcom you've ever seen, only worse.Bad. Bad. Bad. While not quite one of the worst films of all time, there are some funny bits, this is a film thats sure to induce sleep or pained screams in most people who see it. Avoid.