Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost (1942)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) If I repeat myself in reviews of the Mexican Spitfire series, it’s because the movies themselves are almost carbon copies of each other. In Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost, Lupe Vélez once again plays the titular spitfire, ready to unleash torrents of Spanish invectives and threats of divorce at the slightest opportunity, while Leon Errol gets most of the laughs once again by dual-playing a likable uncle and a less likable (but funnier) British lord. The convolutions of the plot, involving hidden bandits, business dealings and the usual intentional blurring of identities of Errol’s characters, are once again at the forefront to fairly good effect. But as usual, the fun is more in the scenes and details than the grander plot. One of the film’s highlights, for instance, is seeing Vélez dressed up as a maid, and screeching loudly as a “Mexican wildcat” in trying to convince a dog to come from underneath some furniture—it’s much funnier than it sounds. Of course, there’s a great blend of sexiness and wackiness at play whenever Vélez shows up in the series: combined with Errol’s very game comedic performances, it makes the series a somewhat consistent experience. The ending is a bit of an explosive puzzler, but it’s not as if anyone cares when the next instalment of the series was there six months later. Film historians infamously remember Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost as the top bill of a double-header that featured no less than Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons in the least desirable spot: mind-boggling but true!