A-Haunting We Will Go (1942 film)

A-Haunting We Will Go
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Alfred L. Werker
Produced by	Sol M. Wurtzel
Written by	Lou Breslow Stanley Rauh
Starring	Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy Dante the Magician Sheila Ryan John Shelton
Music by	David Buttolph Cyril J. Mockridge
Cinematography	Glen MacWilliams
Edited by	Alfred Day
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	August 7, 1942
Running time	66' 40"
Country	United States
Language	English

A-Haunting We Will Go is a 1942 Laurel and Hardy feature film released by 20th Century Fox and directed by Alfred L. Werker. The story is credited to Lou Breslow and Stanley Rauh. The title is a play on the song "A-Hunting We Will Go".

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are two hobos roaming the Arizona countryside. After being arrested for loitering, they spend a night in jail in town. When they are released the day after they are ordered to leave town immediately. Since the men lack every kind of transportation, they come up with the desperate idea of traveling as escort to a coffin and an undertaker’s railroad transport of a corpse out of town to Dayton, Ohio. The corpse will still be in the coffin, of course, but they at least get the transport for free.

Stan and Oliver are happily unaware that the men who has hired them, Frank Lucas and Joe Morgan, are gangsters, working as henchmen for their boss Darby Mason, who is wanted by the law. Mason’s real name is Norton, but this name is known to the police. Mason has seen in the newspapers that a search for an heir to a very large fortune has started in Dayton. The heir’s name is Egbert Norton, and Mason plans to sneak unseen into Dayton and pretend to be the heir once he is inside the city limits. Mason has planned to hide at a sanatorium, run by the dubious doctor Lake, until he can re-surface and collect the inheritance from the attorney, Malcolm Kilgore.

Stan and Oliver are trusted with loading the trunk, with Mason in it, onto the train. They manage to mix the trunk up with another, similar one, belonging to Dante the magician, a stage magician, who transports his stage trunk on the train. Once aboard the train, Stan and Oliver also manage to be tricked by two con-men, Phillips and Parker. For their last dollars they buy a fake money-making machine from the con-men. They are so poor they can’t even pay for dinner on the train. Dante the Magician picks up their bill for them, and they promise to repay the artist once they get to Dayton, where the magician is to perform on stage.

Arriving in Dayton, the trunk with Mason in it is sent to the theater where Dante will perform, while the magician’s trunk is sent to the sanatorium, where Lake awaits its arrival. Lake opens the trunk and realizes that there has been an accidental switch of trunks. He contacts the attorney, Kilgore, telling him that Norton isn’t available for an interview that day.