Being a total fool for handsomely mastered 1080p versions of silvery black-and-white films of the ’40s, I’ve been saying for years that I’d love to get my hands on a Hold That Ghost Bluray. I think Ghost, a punchy horror comedy released in August 1941, is the greatest Abbott & Costello film of all time…Bud and Lou as Chuck and Ferdie, directed by Arthur Lubin, costarring Joan Davis and Richard Carlson, and featuring a fat, moustachioed gangster character named Moose Matson!
The problem was that back in ’21 a hi-def Ghost wasn’t selling or renting as an individual unit. You had to shell out $105 for an Abbott & Costello Complete Universal Collection box set. And that wouldn’t do.
But now the Universal home video guys have finally eased up and mastered a stand-alone Hold That Ghost Bluray, and 4K UHD one at that. It pops on 4.28.26.
HE-posted on 2.25.21:
During the promotion of 2016’s The Nice Guys, Ryan Gosling called Abbott & Costello‘s Hold That Ghost (Universal, 8.6.41) “kind of a masterpiece.” I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s an agreeably silly thing…goofy and lively, fast-paced…everyone’s on mescaline including the tough-guy gangsters**.
** Actually the Andrews Sisters are clearly not on mescaline, and neither is Ted Lewis.