Topper Returns – 1941
The special effects on this film weren’t bad at all. They contained your standard issue of matte-paintings, rear-projection, composited shots, and even a fair amount of double exposure shots, creating effects like those seen in the Invisible Man. It all made for some fun visuals, and a delightful little film.
Topper Returns is the third movie in the Topper franchise. As a zany, supernatural, screwball comedy, the jokes and witty one-liners were plentiful, and once the story got going, the effects were just as numerous. The plot revolves around a woman who is murdered. She enlists the help of Cosmo Topper, a man who can communicate with ghosts, to help her learn the identity and motives of her killer, and in doing so, save her friend from sharing her fate. The whole silly adventure takes place inside a mysterious old mansion with creepy servants, secret passageways, trap doors, and an underground lake.
But one thing this movie did that even bested the effects in The Invisible Man, was that the ghost of Gail, played by Joan Blondell, had the ability to appear and disappear at will. In some shots where, for example, she was holding a glass of wine, the glass would appear to be floating in mid-air. When she appeared, the image of the glass shifted a tiny bit as the image on wires disappeared and the woman holding the glass appeared. Still, the placement of the glass was pretty closely matched and the illusion, while not perfect, was pretty good. The same thing happened when the ghost is changing her clothes. We see the dress standing on its own, and then we see it visibly shift as the woman appears inside of it. Again, the transition from one image to the other was not perfectly aligned, but it was close enough for horseshoes and hand-grenades.
Being a screwball comedy, there were a few running gags that had me laughing, one of which was the various ways in which Topper’s chauffer kept falling down secret shafts into the underground lake. Of course, they were obviously dropping a mannequin, but even its slightly poor quality actually helped to add to the campy nature of the movie as a whole.
And then there was an effect where the ghost of Gail was driving a car, so it appeared to be driving itself. There were several ways in which they could have accomplished this. I’m not sure they had the technology to drive the car via remote radio-control, so I’m guessing they had to have a guy crouching on the floor, pressing the pedals and turning the wheel. However they did it, it was a convincing effect.
And they made good use of things like seats that depressed by themselves whenever the ghost sat in them, or the fur rug that moved by itself when she walked across it. Doors opened and closed by themselves and curtains magically separated as the spirit moved between them. Fun effects for a fun movie!