Synopsis for
Topper Returns (1941) More at IMDbPro »

Wealthy heiress Ann Carrington (Carole Landis), and her best friend Gail Richards (Joan Blondell) are riding in a speeding taxi driven by Bob (Dennis OKeefe), along the coast. A figure dressed all in black, with covered face and hat, aims a rifle with a telescopic sight with crosshairs at the cab from a distance and shoots at one tire to create an accident that nearly kills everyone. The taxi ends up on its side at the very edge of a high cliff, inches away from having fallen into crashing ocean waves below.

Bob leaves her fares on the road and walks back to seek help. Ann and Gail try hitchhiking first, then sit in the middle of the road so a car is forced to stop, a sports car. In the car are banker Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) and his chauffeur Eddie (Eddie Rochester Anderson). The two girls brazenly climb into the car and insist on being driven to Anns destination, the Carrington Mansion. The sports car is so small that Gail must ride sitting on Cosmos lap.

As they drive past Toppers residence, Mrs. Clara Topper (Billie Burke) sees her husband ride past with a curvaceous blond sitting on his lap, and distraughtly concludes he is having an adventure.

The girls are dropped off at the stately cliff top mansion next door to Toppers residence, where they are received by three creepy staff members, butler Rama (Trevor Bardette), housekeeper Lillian (Rafaela Ottiano), and doctor Jeris (George Zucco).

Dr. Jeris warns Ann that her father Henry Carrington (H. B. Warner) is in poor health and leads her into another room to meet him. In their conversation we find out that the next day would be Anns twenty first birthday, the day that, according to her mothers will and a trust fund, she is to come into full control of a fortune. Ann has no memories of her father, as they have been separated since her mother died in a cave in while she was inspecting the family mine together with a business partner.

After meeting her father, Ann and Gail are shown to upstairs adjoining bedrooms. As Ann crosses the main hall, a heavy giant chandelier drops down, and she escapes harm because Gail screams in time for her to jump out of the way, being missed by inches. Anns bedroom is spectacularly decorated and Gail makes such a fuss about how beautiful it is that Ann insists that they trade beds, and Gail sleeps in what was supposedly Anns bed.

In the middle of the night, a secret panel opens in Anns bedroom, the masked, hatted figure dressed all in black enters the bedroom, and Gail is knifed to death as she gets up to shut the window, evidently having been mistaken for Ann.

Gails ghost separates from her body. Ghost-Gail slowly realizes she has been murdered instead of her friend Ann, and that someone in the house is guilty. She goes to the next mansion down the road, where Topper lives, to find someone who can both protect Ann and solve her own murder. At the next house she finds Topper, who can see her and talk to her, and convinces him to come to the Carrington mansion by threatening to make a terrible scandal with his wife if he doesnt.

Topper uses the house phone to call Eddie the chauffeur, to get the car ready. Eddie grumbles protests but he does drive Topper to the next door mansion, not without experiencing, along the way, an enormous number of puzzles as doors open and shut, cushions depress, voices are heard, cigarettes smoke themselves, footprints appear on the walkways, and so on. Eventually he gets so scared that he drives back to Toppers and starts packing to leave. Mrs. Topper finds him and asks where Cosmo is, and wants to be driven to the house next door to find him. Eddie says hes had it and wants to go back to work for his former employer, Mr. Benny, but Mrs. Topper convinces him to go to look for Topper.

Meantime, Topper with the guidance of Ghost-Gail finds the dead body of Gail, then goes downstairs and decides to phone the police. But the phone does not work, and the creepy staff find him and surround him and keep him confined. He insists on going up to the bedroom to show them the body but Gails body is not there. The doctor and Mr. Carrington now treat him as a lunatic.

At this point Mrs. Topper, her maid Emily (Patsy Kelly), and Eddie arrive and insist Topper is in the house and they push their way in to look for him.

By this time it is nearly daytime, Bob the taxi driver comes to the house to collect his unpaid fare, and Ann, who is wondering what happened to Gail, becomes frightened and asks Bob to stick around and escort her, which he does, as she is very pretty and appealing. They go into the bedroom where Gail had slept and while Ann is there the black dressed masked assassin goes to attack Ann but she sees him in time, in a mirror, screams, and Bob responds in time to see the black figure escape by the window.

In the following sequences, there are lots of comings and goings with people disappearing and reappearing by way of concealed stairways and hallways reachable by moving or rotating wall panels. Mrs. Topper calls the police and soon a police detective (Donald Mc Bride) with a squad of cops comes in and starts asking questions. He gets confused by the conflicting answers and by tricks that Ghost-Gail plays from time to time.

The creepy staff and Mr. Carrington, who, by the way, no longer acts and moves as a sick frail man, confine Mr. Topper in the kitchen walk in refrigerator for a while. Later, Ghost-Gail steals the gun from the detectives pocket and with it, she pushes Topper to get everyone else into the refrigerator and lock them in, so as to gain time to find Gails body, as the detective insists there isnt any murder evidence if there isnt a body.

Lillian the housekeeper, who models her clothing and behavior after the creepy Mrs. Danvers in the movie Rebecca, decides to start talking to say she was in some of the deceptions but had nothing to do with the murder, the lights go out suddenly and Lillian disappears. It turns out there is a secret chain in the fireplace that, when pulled, makes the chair in the center of the room tilt backwards and dump the occupant down a vertical shaft and land in a water filled cave below the mansion.

Eventually, the threads come together, Topper and Gail manage to get Gails body back from a small ship a short distance away from the water cave, the body is displayed, and despite the comic total confusion of the detective, logic finds that the killer must have been the person who was standing nearest the fireplace when Lillian was about to talk, and that person was none other than . . . Mr. Carrington!

Mr. Carrington uses his knowledge of the house to make a dash out, get in a car, and drive off. Ghost Gail gets into Mr. Toppers sports car, and goes in pursuit. Eddie is in the back seat, terrified at the car that is being driven at top speed on winding roads with an invisible driver. Mr. Carrington, followed in hot pursuit, must drive faster and faster and eventually loses control, crashes his car against a tree on the side of the road, and he dies, becoming a ghost himself. Before anyone else arrives, Ghost-Gail and Ghost-Carrington talk to Eddie. Ghost-Carrington apologizes to Eddie for the several dunkings into the ocean water that he endured earlier after sitting in the trick chair. But Eddie is so freaked out by the voices, that he dashes off to seek employment elsewhere.

Ghost-Gail browbeats Ghost-Carrington into writing a letter to Ann, confessing that he is not her father, but her fathers old business partner. Her father died in the mine together with Anns mother, and he has been impersonating Carrington, and wanted to kill Ann to keep the fortune for himself. Ghost-Gail gives the letter to Topper when the rest of the cast arrives at the crash scene, and Topper hands it to Ann.

That pretty much ends the movie, as Clara Topper sees that Cosmo was telling mostly truth about his adventures with the two young ladies, and Bob and Ann comfort each other.