OLD MOTHER RILEY'S GHOSTS [1941]

 "WELL, I'LL BE . . . . . . BELOW ZERO!"

  Watched this one because, to the best of my knowledge, it's the only other Mother Riley film besides OLD MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE aka VAMPIRE OVER LONDON that has any horror connections.  Sadly, there's no Bela Lugosi here.  Arthur Lucan in drag as Old Mother Riley had a perplexingly long career as Old Mother Riley and I can't say I'm much of a fan.  Consequently, this will surely be the only 'other' Mother Riley film I ever see (after the aforementioned Bela Lugosi co-starrer). 

The plot was old and hoary back in 1941 when the film was made (even and especially for 'horror comedies').  And only the second half has any tenuous connection to a horror comedy anyway.  Old Mother Riley (Arthur Lucan) is a charwoman working at a company named Cartwright & Co.  Mother Riley busts up a board meeting (most unfunnily) by causing chaos while 'cleaning' and she immediately gets the sack.  Eating her lunch in the park, she shares a bench with a penniless John Cartwright (John Stuart) who, we saw earlier, is the son of the head of Cartwright & Co. who has also been tossed out by his father for going against his wishes.  Invited home for tea, John Cartwright meets Old Mother Riley's daughter Kitty (Kitty McShane) and their border Jem (Dennis Wyndham) who is an amateur inventor.  John Cartwright is working on a new experimental fuel and he and Jem team up to work on it together.  Meanwhile, both Jem AND Kitty are sacked from their respective (Kitty's was as a tea lady at Cartwright & Co.) jobs as well so the financial situation at Chez Riley looks bleak.  Until, of course, Old Mother Riley randomly plops something into the experimental concoction and hey presto a new fuel to replace petrol is created!  John & Jem need additional money to complete and refine their experiment so, unbeknownst to them, Kitty goes to her old boss at Cartwright & Co. and asks him to invest.  The old boss turns her down. 

Soon after, a Mr. Butterick (A. Bromley Davenport) turns up and informs Mrs. Riley that her late husband's family had all gone defunct and she has now inherited an old castle.  The quartet packs up and heads off to take possession of the castle which will also provide a big space to continue perfecting the new fuel.  Met by caretaker McAdam (the wonderful John Laurie), the spooky old castle begins freaking everyone out.  All the horror-comedy tropes are dragged out to make Old Mother Riley in particular a nervous wreck.  I don't think it's much of a spoiler (since we are shown fairly quickly) that McAdam, Butterick and a bunch of others from Cartwright & Co. are out to steal the formula for the new fuel and are causing all the spooky occurrences in an effort to do so.  The spooky goings on are all overly familiar, of course, but make the film just about watchable.  Whereas OLD MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE years later looks very threadbare (as it was the final Mother Riley film), the castle set in OLD MOTHER RILEY'S GHOSTS looks marvelous and is top drawer!  Arthur Lucan as Mother Riley is, at the best of time, rather annoying and most of the rest of the cast is rather pedestrian. 

John Laurie, obviously, is his usually magnificent self and elevates every scene in which he appears.  Dennis Wyndham as Jem is also pretty good; giving and "Edgar Kennedy" vibe to his performance.  Lucan himself also appears as a man for the first and only time in the film series as a thug who impersonates Old Mother Riley at one point.  This allows the movie to drag out one more 'old dark house' horror-comedy trope of having the real Mother Riley and the fake Mother Riley (both played by Lucan) running around the castle causing more confusion.  While certainly not recommended by me, OLD MOTHER RILEY'S GHOSTS is a just-watchable, mildly-enjoyable waste of time which is not terrible but not very good either.  If you're kindly disposed to this kind of thing, a late night watch while you're drifting in and out of sleep might be the best way to watch this barely over-an-hour film.