Haunted Honeymoon came out in the summer of 1986. I was eight. I remember sitting outside on the patio and seeing an ad for it in The Scranton Times: “Haunted Honeymoon, a comedy chiller.” Can you imagine my excitement? But by the time I'd convinced my parents to take me to see it, probably 10 days later, it was gone. And when a few months later it arrived on VHS on the shelves of Montage Video, I could not wait to get it into my hot little hands and into the waiting maw of our Magnavox VCR. And for eight year-old me, it was 10,000% worth the wait.

A set of creaking doors opens onto a misty estate. I was already sold. There's a murder and a wig and a Dusenberg and a werewolf and Stormville, New York. I had been to Stormville, New York! Be still, my young heart! And then we smash to this throng of reporters rushing into the studio where “Manhattan Mystery Theatre” is broadcast. I grew up listening to records of The Shadow with my grandmother. And from that moment, for me, it was then as it is today: 82 minutes of pure joy, suffused with some kind of facsimile of golden age Hollywood glamor, and an objectively kooky cast of fantastic American and British comic actors doing their best performative, histrionic 1930s. They're a total delight. And I think that the score, like the dusty production design, is exuberant and perfect.

With regard to production design, it's worth noting that Knebworth House, the exterior of the mansion, has also been used a million times in a million movies, including The Lair of the White Worm. The Monster Club with Vincent Price and John Carradine, Tim Burton's Batman, Eyes Wide Shut, and I think also a handful of Hammer films were shot at Knebworth House. I think the costume design and the styling is really expert. The clothes feel either really 30s chic or like they've been worn a thousand times and are a decade old. And the writing is really silly and delicious. When Larry and Vicky arrive at Aunt Kate's house and meet Pfister, Larry is calming Vicki down and he tells her that Pfister might seem a little strange, but it's perfectly normal, and Vicki asks, “What'll I talk about?” Larry says, “Talk about a minute. That'll be enough.” I use that line to this day.

I also think that the practical effects in it are pretty perfectly executed. Gene Wilder and John Stears used period-appropriate techniques to realize the effects. Wilder really wanted to evoke ‘30s films in the cinematography while shooting in color. So there are no primary colors. There's a real softness to the look of it. And it's filled with visual gags that I love, like Larry's bedroom, which is cobwebbed from here to eternity that Rachel never stops cleaning up. We get Chekhov's Ming Vase.

And of course, it has to be said that this film is filled with references, references that I couldn't possibly understand when I first saw it, but they're so significant to the experience of seeing Haunted Honeymoon that it couldn't exist without them because it parodies all the tropes of horror films set in old dark houses. Between the mid ‘70s and the mid ‘80s, there were a handful of movies, most of them comic, that revived the subgenre. We've got Clue, Murder by Death, a remake of The Spiral Staircase, House of the Long Shadows, which I love, which has Peter Cushing and Vincent Price and Christopher Lee and John Carradine. And also there was a film that came out shortly before Haunted Honeymoon called Bloodbath at the House of Death, which is also a fun watch.

But Wilder took considerable inspiration from The Old Dark House. He cribbed dialogue directly from it. Aunt Kate's first speech, you know, “They were all godless here. They used to bring their women, their brazen, lolling creatures.” That whole section is lifted from Rebecca Femm in The Old Dark House. The Spiral Staircase from 1946, which is all about psychological elements related to trauma that stems from the death of parents — It's got drunken servants. It's got an infirm matriarch and a lot of people running from room to room in an old mansion. The score of The Spiral Staircase is very influential to the score of Haunted Honeymoon. And The Spiral Staircase was an adaptation of a novel which was first presented as a radio play prior to being made into a film, much like the meta device at work in Haunted Honeymoon. In fact, Dom DeLuise based his performance as Kate on Ethel Barrvmore's performance as Mrs. Warren in The Spiral Staircase. They look nearly identical, they have the same hairstyle, and [SPOILER] they both shoot the villain dead on a staircase during the finale. Larry Abbot feels like an anagram for Larry Talbot, which is Lon Chaney Jr.'s character's name in The Wolf Man. And the werewolf looks like Chaney in that film. And we've got visual references to Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, the candelabra in the hallway that are held by moving arms.

At this point, I have seen this movie probably more than a hundred times. When the DVD came out in 2001, I bought it immediately. I own a copy of the original soundtrack recording on CD, which now sells for $150 on eBay. I have a copy of the screenplay from the Gene Wilder collection at the University of lowa. When we were kids, my brother and I used to shout, “Oh, what memories,” and slide down bannisters. As I watched it again, I found myself once again laughing out loud. And when Gene and Gilda sing a snatch of “Always, In All Ways” right before the movie ends, my heart nearly burst again.

What makes me sad, however, is that while this movie is breaking exactly zero new ground, there are not a lot of firsts happening here. There are a lot of lasts. This was the final theatrical feature film that Wilder directed. It was the final collaboration between Dom DeLuise and Gene Wilder. And this was the last film Gilda Radner appeared in. And Gene Wilder said, talking about Haunted Honeymoon, it's my favorite kind of film in the world. And he was referring to the kinds of films that he loved as a kid that scared him but also made him laugh.

And I chose it because I couldn't agree with him more.

To listen to our episode on Haunted Honeymoon, click here.

Bradford Louryk