1937 Mickey Mouse cartoon
Lonesome Ghosts is a 1937 Disney animated cartoon, released through RKO Radio Pictures on Christmas Eve, three days after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). It was directed by Burt Gillett and animated by Izzy (Isadore) Klein, Ed Love, Milt Kahl, Marvin Woodward, Bob Wickersham, Clyde Geronimi, Dick Huemer, Dick Williams, Art Babbitt, and Rex Cox.[2] The short features Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck & Goofy as members of The Ajax Ghost Exterminators. It was the 98th short in the Mickey Mouse film series to be released, and the ninth for that year.[3]
This short marked the first use of one of Goofy's catchphrases, "Somethin' wrong here!".
Plot
The Ajax Ghost Exterminators - Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck & Goofy - are hired by telephone to drive out four ghosts from a haunted house that has long been abandoned. Unbeknownst to them, however, they were called by the ghosts themselves, who are bored because nobody has visited the house for a long time (either because none of the locals were scared or they had scared them all away, as one ghost puts it: "Guess we're too good!"). They wish to play tricks on the living and do so through a series of inventive, annoying pranks.
The exterminators arrive and knock on the front door, which falls down. When they announce themselves, there is nobody to receive them. Mickey decides they should get to work anyway. When entering, the door lifts up and throws them inside before putting itself back in place, making a mousetrap fall shut on Goofy's nose. After hearing the ghosts' laughter, the three split up to hunt the ghosts individually.
The exterminators are toyed with at every turn; a ghost knocks Mickey on the head and puts its fingers in both barrels of his shotgun when he tries to shoot it and it explodes. Mickey is driven upstairs and tries to open a door that the ghost disappears into, which falls down and the ghosts (forming a marching band) come out of the fallen door and go into another.
Mickey opens the door, which causes water to pour out of it while the ghosts surf across it on surfboards. The last one comes out on a motorboat that goes in a circle around Mickey until it and the water disappear altogether.
Donald, meanwhile, is whacked in the rear with a wooden board and is scared away by the sounds of banging chains and dishes. He punches the ghost, but it resurfaces and blows water in his face.
Goofy runs into a bedroom at the sound of a ghost banging a wooden spoon on a pan. He soon becomes tangled in a dresser after seeing a ghost in a mirror instead of his reflection and stabs his rear with a pin, mistaking his blue pants for a ghost, and is shoved down into the basement.
In the end, the three exterminators crash into some molasses, flour and syrup, making them look like ghosts and consequently, they scare the actual ghosts out of the house in a panic, knocking off and smashing objects. The ghost hunters stand victorious, having driven the spirits out of the house, although not exactly certain how. Donald smugly assumes the ghosts fled in capitulation to their superior tactics, calling them sissies and laughing.
