The Ghost Breakers (1940)

Starring Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson, Paul Lukas, Willie Best
Directed by George Marshall
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A young heiress travels to Cuba to claim her inheritance, accompanied by a radio host fleeing a murder charge, and they discover someone is out to kill her for her haunted mansion.

Hope and Goddard are reunited after their successful teaming in The Cat And The Canary, and in my opinion are even better together in this eerie and atmospheric mystery, well-directed by Marshall, with winning story elements like a genuine ghost, a zombie, and a hidden treasure to hunt for.  Goddard brings a vivacious energy and her natural beauty, exquisitely captured by cinematographer Charles Lang, and Hope has some witty lines and projects a honest and decent persona.  The film's dated a bit by some unfortunate racial humor, much of it involving Hope's valet, played by Willie Best, in another of his easily scared stereotypes, but he and Hope have a good rhythm going, and Best is gifted with some funny lines of his own.  For inexplicable reasons, white actress Virginia Brissac is put in black makeup to play a voodoo priestess, but Noble Johnson, playing her zombie son, is a credit to the picture.  Very frightening in a mute performance with a haunting stare, the actor adds much of the menace to the latter half of the picture. Ernst Toch's music score is exceptional, really adding oomph of its own to the spooky visuals of the haunted mansion, well-designed by art directors Hans Dreier and Robert Usher.  The appearance of a ghost with Toch's accompaniment is among the creepiest of 1940s cinema.  The film was later remade in the 1950s as a vehicle for Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but The Ghost Breakers is the superior film.