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(1950) Jimmy Jewel, Ben Warriss, June Elvin, David Greene, Lesley Osmond, Stewart Rome. Jewel and Warriss were a British comedy team (as well as first cousins) dating back to the early ‘30s. In this film they play a couple of bungling detectives hired to clear the son of a British colonel, who’s landed in jail on murder charges. The boys set out to find the real killer and soon cross paths with a sinister-looking professor who freelances as a psychoanalyst and hypnotist. The professor owns a “haunted house” out in the country, which the boys explore in an attempt to find the murder weapon. It’s here that the film takes a sharp turn from comedy-mystery to comedy-horror. Down in the house’s haunted cellar they encounter a pair of legs, on top of which sits a blackened ghost, which keeps harassing them much like Lou Costello and Joan Davis in Hold that Ghost. There’s also a haunted suit of armor and a beautiful female zombie who glides back and forth across the cellar floor. Abbott and Costello had recently garnered great success with Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein and Jewel does his best to imitate Costello at certain moments, acting as scared as possible with many of Lou’s same mannerisms. There’s even a brief spinoff of the A&C candle routine, also seen in Hold that Ghost. Let’s have a Murder is a flawed film, but still entertaining and a curious look at a forgotten British comedy team. This is the much shorter 1959 American release version, which appears to be the only extant version remaining. From 16mm
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