Hal Roach has had a brainstorm. In a fit of temporary insanity he conceived a movie combining Disney fantasy, Runyon plot, West-Lamarr sex, and Laurel and Hardy slapstick. The chaotic and riotous result is "The Housekeeper's Daughter." Rarely on the screen has there been a set of characters doing more incongruous things. Rarely has the screen seen a funnier comedy.

But the really remarkable thing about the picture is not the magnificent humor, but the stuff of which that humor is made. With the possible exception of one strange little man who runs around with cups of loaded coffee, every character comes straight out of the Sears-Roebuck catalogue,--the hero, doughy, and cute; the heroine, sultry siren; the ba-ad, ba-a-ad gangster; the well-greased reporter; beefy foto-man; city editor on the perpetual verge of a nervous breakdown; and then, of course, somebody gets murdered just to start things off with a bang. A perfect set-up for a grade-B picture.

But it's grade-A. Author and cast took the cut and dried characters and unstocked them with a vengence. Siren Bennett gives out more laughs than heat-waves. Hero John Hubbard is slightly half-witted. Sleuth-reporter Menjou finds no clues, "reconstructed the crime" only once, and terrified gangland with a barrage of firecrackers. The whole picture is an uproarious burlesque on all murder-newsroom sex quickies past, present, and future.