Universal nearly talked itself out of releasing Hold That Ghost. The studio wrapped the film in February 1941 under the title Oh Charlie!, just as Abbott and Costello’s Buck Privates was turning into a box-office smash. Preview audiences reportedly wondered where The Andrews Sisters were, and Universal suddenly worried its new comedy team needed the same musical formula every time out. The film went on the shelf while the studio rushed In the Navy into production. A few months later, Bud and Lou returned to the roadhouse, new nightclub material with Ted Lewis and the Andrews Sisters was added to either end, and Hold That Ghost finally had a release date.

The setup between those musical bookends is pure B-movie fun. Chuck Murray (Bud Abbott, Buck Privates) and Ferdinand Jones (Lou Costello, The Time of Their Lives) are a couple of working stiffs who happen to be present when a mobster dies. His will leaves them a shuttered roadhouse, and rumor has it his stolen fortune is hidden somewhere inside. A handful of stranded travelers winds up spending the night with them, including Camille Brewster (Joan Davis, Sun Valley Serenade), a radio actress who screams professionally. Good thing, too, because it doesn’t take long before candles start moving on their own.

Director Arthur Lubin, already on his third Abbott and Costello release of 1941, wisely gives the routines room to breathe. Costello was never better than when absolute terror took over his entire body, and Hold That Ghost lets him run through the full arsenal: whimpers, frozen double takes, frantic explanations and the inevitable moment when he finally gets Abbott to look and whatever scared him has disappeared.

The team’s “Moving Candle” routine, reportedly one of the ideas that helped inspire the picture, is the obvious standout, and Davis proves more than capable of matching Costello shriek for shriek. There’s something especially funny about watching two performers compete over who can be more frightened. Writers Robert Lees, Frederic Rinaldo and John Grant would later script Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, the duo’s horror-comedy high point, and you can already see the formula taking shape here. Let the shadows feel real, give the scares a little bite and trust the jokes to come from the characters reacting to them.

You can also see exactly where Universal got nervous. The added nightclub material feels like it wandered in from another Abbott and Costello picture because, for all practical purposes, it did. The songs interrupt the haunted-house momentum just when the movie should be tightening the screws. Evelyn Ankers and Richard Carlson are perfectly pleasant as the comparatively sensible members of the group, but sensible is rarely what you remember from an Abbott and Costello movie.

Bob Hope’s The Cat and the Canary had already shown how much mileage Hollywood could get from putting a frightened comedian inside a creaky old house. Bud and Lou grabbed the setup and ran screaming with it. Eighty-five years later, a candle that refuses to stay where Costello left it can still get one of the biggest laughs in the room.