What do you get when you take an immense supernatural tale filled
with dense prose, add four legendary Hollywood actors, throw in some
cheap jump scares, and then cram it all into a two hour running time? If
you said
Ghost Story you are exactly right, but you
probably noticed that was the link you clicked so that is kind of
cheating, yet back in 1981 audiences weren’t sure what they’d be getting
when they visited their local cinema. Would this be on par with films
like
The Exorcist and
Halloween, which Universal Studios was certainly hoping for, or would it fail to strike a chord with modern audiences?
Tackling the 500 page horror tale penned by
Peter Straub
was going to be no easy task, as the author took a page from Stephen
King by deciding to paint his story on a large canvas, telling multiple
storylines that would interweave with the main plot, but when adapting
such a story to film a certain amount of things will have to be cut.
Even Tobe Hooper’s
Salem’s Lot had to discard much of King’s 400 page opus and he had three hours to work with, but director
John Irvin had no such luxury with
Ghost Story. Screenwriter
Lawrence D. Cohen
had the daunting task of jettisoning about 90% of the book's tapestry
of characters and plot threads thus leaving behind only a simple story
of revenge.
Albeit a ghostly revenge from beyond the grave.
The
movie centers around four men, the book had five but one of them didn’t
make the cut to the big screen, that live in a small New England town,
who all have been harboring a dark secret for over fifty years, a secret
that has now come back to bite them in the ass. Ricky Hawthorne (
Fred Astaire), Sears James (
John Houseman), Dr. John Jaffrey (
Melvyn Douglas), and Mayor Edward Charles Wanderley (
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.)
make up a small club they call the Chowder Society, an informal men’s
club where they regale each other with scary stories, but now they are
all suffering nightmares that seem to be a harbinger of terrible things
to come. That the movie opens with John Houseman telling a tale of
terror is a bit of an odd choice, not because Houseman is a terrible
storyteller as his voice is perfect for spooky tales, but the problem is
that just one year earlier John Carpenter’s
The Fog
opened with Houseman telling a spooky campfire tale, and so for a brief
moment I was confused as to what movie I’d put in my Bluray player.
“Beware of leper ghosts and gold doubloons.”
Meanwhile in New York City Edward's son David (
Craig Wasson)
seems very concerned with the naked woman in his bed. Sadly something
that rarely concerns me. The tub in the bathroom is overflowing while
David keeps asking this woman, who is lying face down in his bed,
“Who are you?”
Later we learn this woman was his fiancée so his question is more
metaphorical in nature and not due to a guy bringing a woman home
without bothering to get a name. Though he’d have been better off with a
one night stand for when he places his hand on her naked flesh he is
shocked at how cold it is, and then she turns over and her face is
finally revealed.
I guess their relationship wasn’t based on looks.
David
reels back in terror, crashing through his high-rise window, and
falling to his death far below. This leads to Edward calling his other
son Don (
Craig Wasson),
who just so happens to be David’s identical twin thus being played by
the same actor, and he tells the boy he must come home for the funeral.
Don insists to his father that David’s death was not an accident and
being the death involved his brother practically
flying through
a glass window I’d say most forensic officials would want to do a
little investigation on this as well, but not in this movie because we
don’t have time for cops and we’ve got ghosts to bust. The father and
son seem to be at odds but they aren’t given any time to build bridges
before Edward is lured down the street by a spectral figure, and as he
crosses a bridge Edward is startled by the ghost. In terror he falls
backwards off the bridge.
“Boo!”
So
that’s her entire bag of tricks, just scare the crap out of her victims
and hope they die from it? It may seem a trifle lame but you can’t
knock its effectiveness, and despite Ricky, Jaffrey and young Don all
believing something supernatural is going on good ole Sears refuses to
discuss the situation. Don joins the Chowder Society by telling a ghost
story of his own, this one involving a woman by the name of Alma Mobley (
Alice Krige)
who was a secretary at the school Don taught at. The two had a hot and
passionate affair but when things got a bit weird, like Alma demanding
to be married in Don’s hometown with all family and friends watching,
which was pretty much a deal breaker for Don. Then one night Don wakes
to find Alma standing naked in the living, staring out at the ocean, and
without turning around she states,
“I will take you places you've
never been. I will show you things that you have never seen, and I will
see the life run out of you.”
She may be hot but that kind of crazy you don’t need in your life.
That
relationship totally messed up Don’s life, after breaking up with her
and her subsequent disappearance his life spiraled in a downward
direction, but things took an even darker turn when he got a call from
his twin telling him that
he was going to marry Alma. Seems
like she was really hell-bent on marrying into that family. Yet scaring
David out of the window didn’t seem like a good way to seal the whole
marriage deal, and I thought that was the point of her whole goddamn
plan. Maybe David was just too big of a douche, and as the guy was
marrying his brother’s ex that's some pretty damning evidence of his
douchery, so she decided to just kill him instead and then head on to
New England to continue her vengeance fueld killing spree. Why she
didn’t just do that in the first place is never made clear.
Weirder
still is that Ricky comes across two psychos living in an old abandoned
house, one an escaped lunatic by the name of Gregory Bate (
Miguel Fernandes) the other being pint sized Fenny Bate (
Lance Holcomb), and they seem to be working for the ghost.
Never knew a ghost to need a Renfield before let alone two of them.
The
problem here is that these two idiots aren’t all that effective,
certainly not as effective as a “Scare you to Death” ghost who chocks up
another victim by terrifying Jaffrey to death. With the death toll
mounting the remaining two members of The Chowder Society finally spill
the beans to their big deep dark secret to Don. As young men these four
all fell in love with an exotic woman by the name of Eva Galli, who
surprise surprise looks just like Alma, and when she picks Edward as the
lucky one she will sleep with his inability to sexually perform makes
things a little awkward. Later when they are all drunk as skunks the
four boys pay a call on Eva, and that is when things start to turn bad
to worse, Edward knocks Eva down before she can reveal that he failed
the bedroom test, this being bad because he'd already told his boys how
awesome it was, and she hits her head. They find no pulse and jump to
the conclusion that she must be dead. Not wanting to ruin their lives
they decided to put the body where no one will ever find it, which for
some reason involves putting her in the backseat of a car and then
pushing it into a pond. Their idea of
“A place no one will ever find”
differs radically from mine. The stupidity of their dumping ground
isn’t even the biggest problem as it turns out that Eva had only been
knocked unconscious, and so the group end up looking on helplessly as
she bangs on the back window while the car slowly sinks into the pond.
So we are supposed to be on the side of the murderous ghost, right?
Back
in the present Ricky and Don do their best to convince Sears that Eva
and Alma were one and the same person and that she is now a ghost
seeking revenge. How Alma appeared to be a living breathing person, one
who could hold down a day job and have unabashed sex with both Don and
David but could also turn into a ghastly living corpse is never fully
addressed. It's common knowledge that most ghosts have a hard time
landing jobs, unless it’s working for Michael J. Fox in
The Frighteners,
but Alma seemed to have no problem with this. Now a key element to a
successful horror story is having a clear set of rules on how the
supernatural elements function; Alma was capable of taking on a
corporeal form as Eva to date Don and David yet in ghost form she
doesn’t seem to be able to do anything but scare people. This begs the
question,
"If she can take on a physical form why not try killing them old fashion way?"
Her motivations are clear but her methodology is a mess. Another thing
never addressed is how our “heroes” hoped to defeat Alma/Eva, did they
plan on just marching into her haunted house and asking her to knock it
off?
They don’t seem to sporting proton packs.
The
trio enter the Alma's house and immediately reach epic levels of fail
as the staircase collapses, sending Don crashing though to the floor
below, and resulting in him breaking a leg. Sears declares that Don
can’t be moved and offers to drive off to get help. Excuse me? Can’t be
moved? He’s got a busted up leg not a broken back, there’s no reason
they couldn’t have helped him to the car and driven to the hospital.
Instead the idiot Sears drives off alone where he soon encounters Eva
standing in the middle of the snowy road. He runs through her spectral
form but then ends up crashing into a snowbank. He survives this minor
accident but unfortunately for him Fenny Bate was in the backseat and
Sears meets his end.
Killed by Mini-Renfield, now that's embarrassing.
When
Sears fails to return with help Ricky decides he will head off on foot,
but of course this means leaving poor disabled Don alone in the haunted
house and soon the ghost of Eva is stalking down the hallways in search
of her next victim. Meanwhile Ricky spots an approaching car, which he
flags down and then gets in without bother to look to see who is
driving, and of course the driver turns out to be Gregory Bate. One
would think this would be the end of poor Ricky but somehow this escaped
maniac is stabbed to death by an 80 year old Fred Astaire. But what
about Don at the mercy of the ghost?
Seems like Alma really did want to get married.
While
Don is being stalked by Bride of the Damned Ricky somehow makes to the
police on foot and manages to convince them to pull Eva’s car out of the
frozen pond. Umm, hey Ricky, haven't you forgotten about poor ole Don?
Let’s break things down a bit; Ricky stabbed crazy Gregory, causing the
car to crash and roll, and then he spent who knows how long getting to
the authorities, and we must assume he spent even more time convincing
them to get a tow truck over to the old pond, yet he never thinks to
say,
“Sheriff, could you send an ambulance to that old abandoned house, a friend of mine is there and he's badly hurt.”
Sure he thinks exposing Eva’s corpse will lift the curse, and he’s
right of course, but couldn’t he have also sent somebody to rescue Don?
“Damn you, Ricky!”
The
car is found and once opened the rotting corpse of Eva spills out as
it's flesh sloughs off the skeleton. With the dead body revealed the
ghost menacing Don vanishes and the day is saved. And that’s it, that’s
the end of the movie, the curse is lifted and Ricky and Don get to live
happily ever after. Or maybe Ricky goes to jail for the murder of Eva,
as well he should, but the credits roll before we find out what happens.
Peter Straub has stated he drew inspiration from the works of Nathanial
Hawthorne and Edgar Allen Poe but what made it to the screen here is
nothing more than an average
Tales from the Crypt story
that you would have found in an issue of EC comics. Hell, a little more
editing and you could make this into a decent episode of
Supernatural,
but as a two hour movie it’s a bit of a slog. Seeing these Hollywood
giants working together was certainly a treat, and Alice Krige was
simply fantastic in her dual role as Eva/Alma, but if they had all been
in service of a more interesting script we could have had something
truly great here.
Ghost Story is not a terrible movie
but it suffers greatly from its translation from book to screen, much of
what made Straub’s book so riveting is missing here and the finished
result is less than engaging.
“Next week on Vault of Horror.”