Laurel & Hardy head out to sea again in this Hal Roach short. In this one they're hired by the captain of a haunted ship to help him shanghai a crew for his next voyage. The plan is that Stan goes into a bar and annoys a sailor by crushing an egg in his mouth. When the angry sailor gives chase, Ollie's waiting outside the bar to whack him over the head so that the captain can throw him into the hold of the ship. Of course, when Stan and Ollie swap roles Stan gets it all wrong, and he and Ollie end up being shanghaied with their victims. Chaplin used a similar idea in one of his silent pictures, but once aboard ship this story goes off in a completely different direction, with the boys mistaking a drunken shipmate who has fallen into an improbably large tray of white paint for a ghost. The shanghai scenes are the best – after that you get the feeling they're just going through another day at the office. It's not their best work, but it'll do.
Review of The Live Ghost
