Better Late Then Never

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

*Spoiler/plot- A Haunting We Will Go, 1942, 'The Boys' get innocently involved with some crooks and con-men. They have to get 'out of town' and do it while escorting a coffin to another town by rail for money. This job becomes a shady way a gang of crooks take advantage of the new townspeople with another 'con'.*Special Stars- Laurel and Hardy, Dick Lane, Elisha Cook Jr. "Dante the Magician".*Theme- Spooky things happen around stage magicians and crooks.*Trivia/location/goofs- Dante the Magician was doing street magic and got cast in this film. This Columbia Studios film was one that was considered a 'lesser' Larual and Hardy comedy due to not be made at Hal Roach Studios.*Emotion- A quite different film due to its director's serious premise of this being a mystery film instead of a Laurel and Hardy comedy. It lacks some of the classic comedy plot and on camera antics because the writers didn't know what worked for this great comedy duo. Still good to enjoy.

It is sad to note that the majority of Laurel and Hardy's post 1940 comedies are weak, minus the Hal Roach touch that made their shorts and features of the 1930's so beloved. This is one of the rare exceptions, a comedy that doesn't make the aging team look silly and uses the art of magic to enhance their gags. Kicked out of town for vagrancy, the boys need a one-way ticket and take advantage of an ad in the newspaper for a delivery man needed to take a casket to Dayton. They don't realize that the corpse is alive, and a criminal to boot! On the train, they encounter Dante the Magician and somehow get into his act. This is where the fun really begins. The gangsters show up looking for the coffin, which somehow ends up a prop in the show. Laurel & Hardy happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Laurel (literally) ends up with egg on his face.I found myself laughing quite regularly at the series of gags and confusion with Dante's magic behind most of the visuals. Sheila Ryan, who appeared with the boys in "Great Guns", returns for this outing as Dante's assistant. The sight of Laurel and Hardy in their costumes working with Dante has the audience in stitches, as does the moment when Laurel must climb a magic rope as Hardy plays the clarinet to keep the rope standing straight up. Elisha Cook Jr. ("The Maltese Falcon") is instantly recognizable as one of the stereotypical dumb crooks. The ending is another one of the team's visual gags that will have you tearing up in laughter.

Laurel and Hardy had been stars for years with Hal Roach Studios. However, by the 1940s, they were considerably older and their contract had expired. Their decision to try out other studios (RKO, MGM and FOX) resulted in a string of, at best, lackluster films. Sure, they made better money, but none of these films comes close to classic status.As for A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO, it was one of these 1940s films, but at least it wasn't bad--just, unfortunately, made by a studio that had no appreciation for the team at all. The biggest problem about this film is that Stan and Ollie play roles that could have been filled by practically anyone. The usual banter and style you'd expect in a Laurel and Hardy film is strangely absent--something that plagued all their post-Roach productions.The plot for A-HAUNTING WE WILL GO was quite unexpected. With a title like this, I would have expected a movie about a haunted house or ghosts but these were strangely absent from the film. Instead, it's about Stan and Ollie stumbling into a gang of criminals as well as bumbling into becoming assistants to a magician.Fortunately, despite being a very odd and unfamiliar style, the script wasn't bad at all--but unfortunately it wasn't all that funny either. While there were a few mildly funny moments, they were all centered around camera tricks and had nothing to do with the boys themselves. It was if funny things were thrown at them instead of allowing them to just be themselves and express their own gentle form of humor. Still, not a bad film--but far from classic Laurel and Hardy. Worth a look for fans of the team and not particularly offensive or daring.

This is one of laurel and hardy's most underappreciated films. The scene where Stan climbs a rope in a magic trick is one of the funniest things i have ever seen. There are some great lines too - "Let's go to Florida. I'm dying for an orange". Priceless.