"Three Live Ghosts" is a wacky comedy--the sort where you just sit back and let all the craziness occur. In other words, don't think about it...just enjoy the zaniness and don't think too much when it comes to the ending!The film begins with the Armistace in 1918. World War One has just ended and three friend who were in a German prisoner of war camp just escaped. However, all three were declared dead and the authorities insist that they are dead--hence the title of the film. One of them, Jimmie, has a very larcenous mother who doesn't want to stop getting government payments for her supposedly dead son...but she also has learned that someone is willing to pay one thousand pounds for the whereabouts of Jimmie's comrade, Bill (Richard Arlen). If this isn't enough there's 'Spoofy'...the third 'ghost' and a guy who is so shell-shocked that he mostly runs around stealing things...and comes home one night with a fortune in jewels AND a baby!! It's all one crazy mess...yet, miraculously, it all is resolved as if by magic at the end and all is well! Only in a movie!This is a fun film...nutty, but fun. It's clearly a turn off your brain sort of thing and is filled with many cute moments. It was also, incidentally, filmed in 1929 but I haven't seen that version so I cannot compare them. Either way, try to get to this weird film if you can.

The flower of British manhood died on Flanders Field in World War I, so it shouldn't be surprising that the immediate postwar period saw several versions of this story about fighting men 'rising from the dead' appear in cinemas. By the time this second feature was produced by MGM, The Great War was fast becoming a memory and another war was looming on the horizon. Nicely shot on the cheap by H. Bruce Humberstone and James Wong Howe, this version features several cast members who had appeared in the 1929 version, including Beryl Mercer, Claud Allister, and Charles McNaughton. I'm not much of a Mercer fan, but Allister is amusing and McNaughton quite moving as the unwanted stepson who shows up one day on Mum's doorstep. It's nothing terribly special, but viewed in the context of the times it has a certain piquancy, especially during Allister's flashback sequence.

I haven't seen the other versions of this but the story is a simple one. Three war buddies escape a German POW camp at the very end of WW1 and arrive home just in time for the Armistice. To get backpay they have to prove that they are really alive. One of them is an American who appears to be wanted by US law enforcement. The other is his buddy with a thieving conniving money grubbing mom. The third doesn't remember who he is, but he is very good at taking things. He is constantly picking things up which leads to a very big heist, including child kidnapping.Like I said, overall cute, and well worth a small waste of time seeing a movie made just before WW2. I'd like to see the other two versions some day so I can comment on them. But not so much that I want to take the trouble to find them. If they show up on TCM then all's the better.