When a German bomb lands on a crypt, the explosion lets out the ghost of a bad old earl, and lets loose a roundabout plot involving a decayed aristocrat, his tenant, who wishes to enclose a cricket pitch annoying the local villagers, Richard Greene, who has shown up to look at some recently revealed old manuscripts and his real life wife, Patricia Medina, as the earl's daughter.
There's a fair amount of well-constructed social satire in this production, as well as some good jokes, and the amount of silliness increases at a steady pace throughout, as the ghost becomes more and more active in setting things right. A goodly number of screen comics get a chance to amuse the audience, particularly Edward Rigby as the butler, Moore Marriott as the inevitable ciderhouse layabout and Joan Hickson, when she was merely middle-aged -- doubtless, if she ever appeared in any movies when she was young, they were produced by Robert W. Paul.
Although the movie becomes a bit too cartoonish for my taste at the three-quarters mark, it recovers itself nicely at the end and makes its points, humorous, dramatic and serious, nicely by the end.
There's a fair amount of well-constructed social satire in this production, as well as some good jokes, and the amount of silliness increases at a steady pace throughout, as the ghost becomes more and more active in setting things right. A goodly number of screen comics get a chance to amuse the audience, particularly Edward Rigby as the butler, Moore Marriott as the inevitable ciderhouse layabout and Joan Hickson, when she was merely middle-aged -- doubtless, if she ever appeared in any movies when she was young, they were produced by Robert W. Paul.
Although the movie becomes a bit too cartoonish for my taste at the three-quarters mark, it recovers itself nicely at the end and makes its points, humorous, dramatic and serious, nicely by the end.