Hit the Ice is a 1943 musical comedy from Universal, directed by Charles Lamont and starring the comedy duo of Abbott and Costello. Put into production just 12 days after their previous film, It Ain't Hay, it was the first Abbott and Costello film directed by Lamont, who replaced Erle C. Kenton after repeated arguments with Lou Costello.
Sidewalk photographers Flash Fulton (Abbott) and Tubby McCoy (Costello) see a chance to get a job for their local newspaper when their childhood friend Dr. Bill Burns (Patric Knowles) directs them to a building fire. They get some good pictures, but the accident-prone Tubby gets hurt from a fall in the process. After Tubby recovers in the hospital, he and Flash accidentally run into a gangster named Silky Fellowsby (Sheldon Leonard), who is staying in the hospital as an alibi for a bank robbery he’s planning. Fellowsby mistakes Flash and Tubby for two thugs he hired from Detroit to guard the bank entrance. Flash and Tubby mistakenly think Fellowsby has hired them to take pictures of he and his business partners walking out of the bank. When the robbery goes down, Flash and Tubby take pictures of the fleeing gangsters, but find themselves as the main suspects in the robbery. Fellowsby retreats to a Sun Valley ski resort to “recuperate” while things cool off in the city, hiring Dr. Burns and nurse Peggy Osborne (Elyse Knox) to look after him. Tubby and Flash end up unwittingly pursuing the gangsters to the resort and working as waiters, hoping to clear their names and retrieve the stolen money. Unfortunately, Fellowsby has plans of his own for the boys, involving an old friend of his named Marcia Manning (Ginny Simms), who Tubby has fallen hard for...
On the final day of shooting, the duo appeared on their weekly radio show to be crowned America's top box-office stars for 1942.
This film provides examples of:
- As Himself: Johnny Long and his Orchestra, a real 1940s musical act, play themselves at a gig at the Sun Valley resort.
- Assassins Are Always Betrayed: Fellowsby isn’t initially surprised that Tubby and Flash are following them on the train to Sun Valley. He still thinks they’re his hired thugs, following a message he left telling them to follow him (that they never actually got), and plans to quietly bump them off at the resort.
- Bank Robbery: Fellowsby masterminds one that kicks off the main plot. The robbery itself is extremely quick, efficient, and successful, but getting away with the money proves trickier…
- Barrier-Busting Blow: Tubby makes a deal with one of Fellowsby’s thugs, daring him to hit him with only a foot of distance between them… then closes a door between them. The thug punches straight through the door and knocks Tubby off his feet.
- Bears Are Bad News: In the mountain cabin, one of the sled dogs hides under a bearskin rug and scares Tubby and Flash by growling and moving.
- Later, Tubby briefly finds himself sharing his skis with an equally-confused bear during the ski race in the climax. Cue lots of screaming before the bear jumps off.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: At the very end, Tubby is heartbroken to discover Marcia is marrying Johnny Long instead of him. Alone Among the Couples, he watches their train leave the station and groans "If I ever fall in love with another girl I hope they hang me..." Seconds later, another girl on the train winks at him. A moment after that, part of the train catches him around the neck and hoists him clear off the platform.
- Blackmail Backfire: Tubby and Flash try to blackmail Fellowsby by claiming they have pictures of the gangsters leaving the bank after the robbery. They do, but the pictures of the gangsters are from behind, and are worthless as evidence. Since the gangsters know they have pictures, but aren’t aware of that last little detail, however, they manage to bluff them for awhile.
- Bound and Gagged: Tubby finds the bank workers in this state in the bank vault right after the robbery. He figures they aren’t talking to him because they all have toothaches.
- Brandishment Bluff: Near the end, Tubby holds Fellowsby and his thugs at bay with a banana in his coat pocket.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: When Marcia chews Tubby out for tricking her, Tubby retreats towards a nearby pool, further and further… until Marcia storms off. Tubby then turns to the viewer and says “YOU thought I was gonna fall IN, didn’t you?”. Seconds later, another woman walks by, and Tubby DOES fall in.
- Bumbling Henchmen Duo: Downplayed with Fellowsby's two cohorts who work as his hired Dumb Muscle throughout the film.
- Camera Fiend: Tubby and Flash, in the beginning. Justified, given that both are photographers.
- Cassandra Truth: Nurse Osborne becomes increasingly suspicious of Fellowsby's odd behavior early on, and confides in Dr. Burns that she doesn’t think he’s sick at all (and the audience knows that she’s correct). However, given that she has no concrete proof (and what little proof she has was gathered by violating hospital policy), Burns brushes her concerns off.
- Delayed Reaction: On the train, Tubby and Flash evade the conductor by posing as an FBI agent (Flash) cuffed to a convict being transported to Alcatraz (Tubby). Tubby then politely tips his hat to the conductor – showing he’s NOT cuffed – but the conductor goes down another seat before realizing what he saw.
- The Ditherer: One early scene has Flash debating whether to skip town before the cops find them, or to stay and fight the robbery accusations, despite having no money for a lawyer. Poor Tubby is stuck packing, then unpacking, then packing again, then unpacking…
- Failures on Ice: Tubby has a hard time getting the hang of ice skates at the resort. A little girl keeps knocking him over.
- Feathered Fiend: Played for Laughs when a woodpecker takes a strange interest in Tubby’s head, and pecks him a bit of a headache.
- Fireman's Safety Net: When Tubby falls from the burning building in the beginning, he bounces off one of these… and then onto a fabric car roof… and then right onto a stretcher.
- Go Seduce My Archnemesis: Fellowsby tries using Marcia to seduce Tubby into telling her where the negatives of him robbing the bank are. Tubby refuses to tell her, and Marcia’s heart really isn’t in it anyway.
- Hopeless Suitor: Tubby turns out to be this to Marcia. She’s already seeing Johnny Long, and Tubby’s efforts to impress her are all in vain. At the end, he thinks he actually has a chance when she tells him “We’re” getting married, but it turns out she means she and Johnny, not she and Tubby.
- Human Snowball: At the end, Tubby and Fellowsby get in a fight on the side of a mountain, and end up rolling down to the resort in one of these. They pick up a rabbit and a skunk somewhere along the way, and Flash is forced to ski like mad to stay out of their way.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Tubby falls hard in Love at First Sight for Marcia, and his brains seem to vanish whenever he sees her.
- Mistaken for Badass: This trope kicks everything off. The duo play two sidewalk photographers who inadvertently say the right password to a gangster who thinks they're hired thugs, and they quickly astound him with stories of "shooting" people in broad daylight — including the police. They think he wants to get a picture of him and his "business partners" leaving a bank, when he actually wants them to cover their escape after they rob said bank. Hilarity ensues.
- Obstacle Ski Course: Tubby and Flash race the gangsters down a ski trail and off into the woods in the big climax.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: When Fellowsby and his goons first meet Tubby and Flash, the duo are Mistaken for Badass by casually talking about how they make money by "shooting" people by the dozen, but don’t even bother trying if they “shoot” their backs by mistake. Fellowsby is a gangster, Tubby and Flash are photographers. Fellowsby recruits them to cover a bank robbery, which Tubby and Flash misunderstand as a job taking photos of him and his “business partners” as they leave the bank.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Fellowsby claims he’ll know his hired thugs have showed up when they ask him “Is the doctor in?”. Given that he’s expecting to hear this in a hospital, he soon mistakes two unrelated photographers for his goons.
- Playing Sick: Fellowsby feigns illness and stays in a hospital to case a bank across the street, using his illness as his alibi. He somehow got ahold of some pills that temporarily give him a high fever, allowing him to fool the doctors.
- Rule of Pool: Double Subverted — Lou is pushed backwards right to the edge of the pool, but doesn't go in. He then turns to the camera and mocks the audience for assuming he'd fall in, only to promptly do so.
- Rump Roast: Tubby suffers one of these shortly after Marcia tries to seduce him, courtesy of a heater.
- Shoe Phone: Zigzagged. Fellowsby thinks Tubby and Slim are using a camera housing to hide their guns, but the cameras really are cameras.
- Skewed Priorities: When Tubby is hanging from a high, dangerous window in the beginning, Flash tells him to turn around a bit so he can get his face in the shot when he photographs him. Tubby obliges.
- Sled Dogs Through the Snow: Tubby and Flash take a dogsled up to Fellowsby's mountain cabin, and later try to take it back down to the resort – only to get knocked off before they can, so only Marcia takes it back down the mountain.
- Smelly Skunk: While everyone is searching the remains of the Human Snowball Tubby and Fellowsby rolled down the mountain in for the money, they come across one of these. Everyone flees… except for Tubby, who pulls it out by the tail, and gets knocked out cold by the smell.
- Tap on the Head: Tubby grabs a vase and clonks Fellowsby and his goons in the head with it, knocking them cold before smashing the vase over his own head to free his hand… and simply staggering in pain.
- Tempting Fate: At one point, Tubby says "If I ever fall in love with another girl, I hope they hang me". Cue him seeing a pretty girl and the mail hook of a train catching him by the neck.
- That Syncing Feeling: Tubby tries doing this with a piano he’s pretending to play to impress Marcia. First, the code word "All right" for starting and stopping the record gets overused so he keeps lunging back to play again. Next, Flash keeps screwing up when it's time to change the record out, forcing Tubby to improvise. Marcia figures it out pretty quickly.
- There Was a Door: Tubby and Flash sneak into the gangsters’ mountain cabin through a window… only for Tubby to stride over to the door (which was ajar) and push it shut, much to Flash’s frustration.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Fellowsby's hired thugs from Detroit never actually show up at any point, possibly leaving the viewer wondering where they went.
