Because of this Laurel and Hardy film's poor reputation, I decided to watch this with Scott MacGillivray's commentary first before seeing it without. With the commentary, I appreciated many of the visual gags like various accidents from Stan's umbrella or the entire rope trick with Stan rising and falling with it depending on Ollie's playing or not of the clarinet. Of note is that Sheila Ryan appears in her second L & H movie a year after her first with the boys, Great Guns. Also, a couple of men who bilk Stan and Ollie on the train, Richard Lane and Robert Emmett Keane, would subsequently appear with them on The Bullfighters (Lane), The Dancing Masters (Keane), and Jitterbugs (Keane). Anyone interested in African-American comics of the '40s will probably want to check this one out to see both Mantan Moreland and Wille Best as waiters on a train though Mantan makes more of an impression here when he laughs at the boys' obviously fake money they thought was real because of the machine they saw Lane and Keane make different dollar bills from that they bought. As a fan of It's a Wonderful Life, it was certainly a treat for me to see Frank Faylen (Ernie the taxi driver) try to throw L & H off the train. While Stan and Ollie do provide plenty of laughs especially in a scene concerning two telephone booths from Dante the Magician that provide some nice double exposure of them, the gangster scenes, with one of them being Elisa Cook, Jr. of The Maltese Falcon, are mostly too serious to suit a Laurel and Hardy flick. That lion segment with them was funny though. Compared to the boys' Hal Roach output, this Fox entry doesn't come close quality-wise but A-Haunting We Will Go shouldn't be considered bottom-of-the barrel either. P.S. One of the children that was admiring Dante on the train was Terry Moore, who later became the leading lady on Mighty Joe Young.

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.