Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost

It's time for another Mexican Spitfire movie starring Leon Errol. At least this entry in the series does away with any pretensions and starts the movie off with Errol's Lord Epping followed by Errol's Uncle Matt. It's ten minutes into the movie before Lupe Velez's Carmelita shows up. The plot here has Lord Epping asking Dennis (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) to entertain some friends at Epping's country estate while Epping himself goes off hunting. When the friends get there, they're not happy that Epping is a no-show. So, shocker of shockers, Uncle Matt has to pose as Lord Epping while Carmelita is asked to pose as a maid. Then, of course, the real Lord Epping shows up. Oh and there are gangsters in the basement who try to scare everybody out of the house by pretending to be ghosts. Good grief.

Lots of predictable gags, a few of which manage to be amusing. Velez is her usual obnoxious self, not that it matters since she's a supporting player in a movie that she's supposed to be the star of. Welcome to the Mexican Spitfire series. Bug-eyed comic relief Mantan Moreland is also in this. The biggest surprise in the movie is that, despite the ghost angle, Moreland never does his "afraid of spooks" routine. Thank heaven for small favors. Even Donald MacBride can't save this. He plays a nervous wreck who shouts through most of the movie and it's highly annoying. It's a shame since I usually like him.

This series is riddled with flaws and this movie highlights most of them. Every movie has basically the same plot of Uncle Matt posing as Lord Epping then the real Epping showing up. It stopped being funny after the second movie. I'm not a big fan of Lupe Velez but others are and I'm sure they are disappointed to watch a movie for her just to see her play a supporting part. It's a stale series by this point and the addition of other comic actors doesn't seem to help any, particularly since the focus at all times remains on Errol.