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Review by E.C. McMullen Jr. |
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GHOST STORY- 1981USA Release: Dec. 18, 1981 Universal Pictures Rating: USA: R |
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My exposure to this movie is about as laid back as it could ever get.
I didn't see it first or second run, I saw it somewhere around a fuzzy fourth or fifth.
It was already out on home video but a long abandoned theater near my Pop's neighborhood was turned into a liquor establishment. They kept the projectors and circulated old 35mm movies - Horror and Comedies being the most popular: Hardly an art house theater.
Instead of theater seats, they had large oval tables with up to four chairs on one side. The waitress would come to the bare side to serve you food, beer, whatever. It was still the 1980s yet the movie cost $10 per person ($31.00 in 2023). Period. That way you didn't need to count your money in the dark, or the change the waitress brought you. Not pricey back then to the people who could catch a movie, eat lunch or dinner, and keep the beer and popcorn coming till the movie ended or they ran out that $10 buck tab.
Pop wanted to see this movie for a long time. He'd read the book by Peter Straub and was captivated, but Mom wouldn't go. She saw how scared that book got him and refused to see it.
I was in the Navy so Pop waited, and waited, until I came back from my 8 month Westpac and got my 30 days leave. Pre-Internet, every quarter the theater printed up flyers alerting clients to their upcoming movies and GHOST STORY was heading to the "Beer Theater" as my Pop called it. He didn't want to miss it this time. Yes, he could watch it on video but screw that, he wanted the theater experience.
Enjoying Horror movies was one of the few things my Pop and I had in common back then besides Hunting, Fishing, and Looney Tunes. Together we saw 2001: A SPACE ODYESSEY, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT, PLANET OF THE APES, THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN, KING KONG, GODZILLA [1956], THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, FRIDAY THE 13th, and every Mario Bava movie and Lucio Fulci flick he happened across.
It was always random, whatever a theater within 50 miles was playing.
Many of the oldest ones we saw in edited form on TV first and Pop got so worked up he had to see it in a theater if at all possible. Mom was there for Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, THE EXORCIST, and THE OMEN, but she hated (and still hates) Horror movies. If Mom wasn't with us, it had to be an indoor theater. Pop was a 1950s teen. To him, Drive-In movies were for families with kids or backseat gymnastics with your one true. Going alone with your son to a Drive-In was a concept that just made it weird for him.
Back then Pop had never seen THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE HILLS HAVE EYES, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS [1978], ALIEN, or John Carpenter's THE THING. I had and, through snail mail he'd got me all worked up to see this movie. I was finally back in the U.S.A. I'd carefully scheduled my leave in advance to coincide with the movie. I'd read the book from the library while waiting, and was fully onboard for it.
The movie poster took a "Less is more attitude" which made it all the more mysterious and spooky, though not ooky.
Then I saw it.
Keep in mind I was a young man and this was the 1980s, currently revered as the best decade for Horror movies. I was solidly in my Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, Wes Craven, John Carpenter phase.
GHOST STORY opens with a snowbound town and the sound of a woman crying.
In one house an old man paces before his fireplace alone, drinking.
In three other houses old men sleep and each one is wracked with nightmares.
Then, over the opening credits, we hear a man telling a Horror story. His name is Sears James (John Houseman: ROLLERBALL [1975], THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, THE FOG [1980], SCROOGED), the first old man we saw pacing before his fire, and the people he is telling his scary story to are the other men who we saw suffering from nightmares. They are,
Ricky Hawthorne (Fred Astaire),
John Jaffrey (Melvin Douglas: THE OLD DARK HOUSE, THE VAMPIRE BAT, TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING, THE CHANGELING),
Edward Wanderly (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.).
All of the men are visibly affected by Sears story and especially the end.
They call themselves The Chowder Society and at their once a week get together, one of them tells a scary story to the others. Two of the men, Ricky and John, are married and their wives disapprove of their meetings where they frighten each other. Ricky's wife Stella (Patricia Neal: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, STRANGER FROM VENUS, PSYCHE 59, THE NIGHT DIGGER) and John's wife Milly (Jacqueline Brookes: THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON, LAST EMBRACE, THE ENTITY, THE GOOD SON) are convinced that its those damn scary stories they tell each other that accounts for their horrific nightmares. Milly can't even share the same bed as John, as his thrashing and panic attacks while sleeping have injured her.
Elsewhere, in New York City, a bathtub overflows with water as a mustached man in a towel suspiciously asks a naked woman in his bed, "Who are you?"
She answers cryptically. He repeats himself, getting upset but also frightened.
More cryptic non-answers, no more than a word or two. He grabs her, turning her to face him and gets the fright of his life.
One dead questioner later and we're at a college campus. A man who looks identical to mustache man is teaching a class. He's not good at it, deathly dull in fact, and one of his idiot students asks an idiot question.
The teacher's name is Don Wanderly (Craig Wasson: SCHIZOID, BODY DOUBLE, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: THE DREAM WARRIORS, MIDNIGHT FEAR, TRAPPED IN SPACE, BOA) and later that day he gets a call from his Father. "Come home, son. Your brother is dead."
The tension between the two men, father and son, is tight and awkward. There's love between them but its lost and neither knows where to find it.
Edward wanting more for his son means expecting more from his son, while Don, who was not the favored son, only wants acceptance from his Pop. What neither know is both are harboring and, damaged by, a terrible secret which connects them in ways they can't imagine. Don openly suspects that his brother David's death was no accident, but that he was murdered by Don's former fiance. Edward, having never met or seen the woman, finds Don's confession obscene and outrageous, especially coming the night before David's funeral.
After the burial, Don stays, his heart softened toward his Pop seeing as the two are all that's left of their family. At night he hears his father crying out in his sleep, stricken with nightmares.
The next day Edward thinks he sees David walk past his house. Hurrying outside in only pajamas, a bathrobe, and slippers, he chases through the snow after the specter, calling out David's name. Edward soon winds up on a bridge and we hear the voice of the naked woman on the bed, call to Edward. He turns and gets the fright of his life, his death remarkably similar to David's and just as mysterious.
In a single week Don has attended the funeral of his older brother and his father. He's alone in the world and packing away his father's belongings when he comes across an old photo of when his father and his friends in the Chowder Society were younger than he is. There's a woman in the photo and Don realizes in shock that it is his old fiance, Alma.
Don, adrift by all the trauma, is now convinced that Alma is somehow behind it all. Turning to the only people left in his life, his father's old friends, he seeks to gain admittance to The Chowder Society. The price: a Ghost Story.
Don feels he has a doozy.
He used to teach at a small but prestigious university. He was doing well and the President was grooming him for advancement. He met the president's secretary, Alma (Alice Krige: SLEEPWALKERS, STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT, REIGN OF FIRE, STAY ALIVE, SILENT HILL, CARNIVAL ROW [TV], GRETEL AND HANSEL, SHE WILL), and sparks flew. They began a whirlwind romance so obsessive they abandoned their work, spending time only with each other.
As wonderful as it all was, however, Alma had frightening quirks. When Don proposed she demanded that they marry in his dull and tiny home town of Milburn, before his father, his father's friends, and the entire town. She wants them all to see her.
As if that wasn't strange enough, Alma would mercurially slip into cruelty or scream hysterically over seemingly insignificant things. Because he was in love, Don tried to be comforting and understanding. But there were times he'd wake up alone in bed and, when he searched for her he'd find her apparently sleep walking, telling herself how she would watch him die.
Well after a few times of that, Don put the kibosh on their wedding plans and returned to his job, only to find, of course, that having been gone for weeks without any explanation, he no longer had one.
Hoping to repair their relationship, he looked for Alma and found she'd cleared out her house and moved.
It wasn't long though before David, living far up north in New York City, happily called his little brother and told him the great news about his new fiance. It was a whirlwind romance and they met because she saw him on the street and thought he was Don.
Don doesn't believe such an improbable coincidence could have happened. Especially when he hears that they are going to get married in Milburn. Damn she works fast! Don warns David but big bro thinks little bro is being jealous.
Soon after David "fell" to his death out of a window. Soon after Edward "fell" to his death off a bridge.
Don found the photo of Alma from when the old fogies were young men. He believes Alma is a ghost and that's his ghost story. But the old men of the Chowder Society have been scaring each other for decades and they have one of their own.
What you may find extraordinary after watching this movie is to realize that the "Haunted House" of this movie, seen from every angle with the actors moving in and out of the front door, never existed. It was a matte-painting on glass by 2 time Oscar Winner and the 20th century's Special Visual Effects Artist extraordinaire, Albert J. Whitlock (20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA [1954], THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM [1961], Alfred Hitchcock's MARNIE, MIRAGE, MUNSTER GO HOME, Alfred Hitchcock's TORN CURTAIN, STAR TREK [TV - TOS], COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT, Alfred Hitchcock's TOPAZ, THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, Alfred Hitchcock's FRENZY, THE SENTINEL, THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, THE CAR, DRACULA [1979], CAT PEOPLE [1982], John Carpenter's THE THING, PSYCHO II, TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, CLUE, THE GATE, GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH).
The Special Make-up Effects, was also helmed by a virtuoso at his craft who was also a two time Oscar winner, Dick Smith (THE FLAME BARRIER, 'WAY OUT [TV], DARK SHADOWS [TV - TOS], THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE [1968], HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS, THE EXORCIST, THE STEPFORD WIVES, THE SENTINEL, THE EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, ALTERED STATES, SCANNERS, THE HUNGER, SPASMS, TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE: THE MOVIE, MONSTERS [TV], DEATH BECOMES HER, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL [1999]).
The best parts of GHOST STORY is their work.
Though all the actors gave it their best as well, screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen had difficulty turning Peter Straub's nearly 500 page book into a 120 page script. He suggested to the Universal suits that they should turn it into a television mini-series like Stephen King's 'SALEM'S LOT, but they paid nearly a quarter million for the movie rights to GHOST STORY (just over $1 million adjusted for inflation) and by Ghod they were going to get a theatrical movie!
Director John Irvin would go on to say that Universal Studio executives heavily edited his movie, turning it into something nearly unrecognizable. He also worked mostly in TV before this movie and GHOST STORY looks it. It doesn't have a wide screen cinematic look, where the characters and action take advantage of the space. It has a 1980s 4.3, practically square Television look. Also, far too many distracting times, John smeared the lens.
In the old days, Smear the lens meant smearing Vaseline onto a sheet of glass and positioning it between your camera and actors. This was often done for extreme close-ups of women but also for male actors whose complexions might be less than ideal when blown up onto a 25 foot long screen. Soft focus lenses came along later in various degrees of soft focus and Holee Shit! John went preposterously heavy on these for many of the flashback sequences and GHOST STORY has plenty of those.
No amount of editing made that happen and it looks awful.
As I mentioned, both my Pop and I read the book before we saw the movie. Yet he sat there, sipping beer and eating nachos, edge of his seat, waiting for every scary moment that he read in the book to visually take place before his naked eyeballs, and if it happened, when it happened, he was knocked-out every time!
I was sitting there, sipping beer and eating nachos, and disappointed that so much of Straub's good stuff wasn't on the screen and what was there dragged and ginned up manufactured drama.
For example, in one scene a character falls in a house and breaks his leg. His two companions are able to set his leg with rope and broken pieces of wood. After that they...
Help him to the car and drive him to the hospital?
NO!
One of them drives off, after promising to return with help! Which doubles whatever time it would take to make a one-way trip to get him the medical attention he needs!
ARGH!
As Stephen King feels toward Stanley Kubrick's version of THE SHINING, so Peter Straub felt about GHOST STORY and he never let anyone make any more of his novels into a movie.
I watched GHOST STORY again just before writing this review to see if time softened me toward it.
It didn't. Which is why GHOST STORY gets 2 Shriek Girls.
This review copyright 2023 E.C.McMullen Jr.
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