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By
NICK ZEGARAC
A best-selling novel is just
about the safest insurance that any director can
buy toward the success of his own movie.
Unfortunately, it's no guarantee or recipe for
greatness. Author Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" is
the rather chilling tale of four friends who
accidentally murder a wealthy socialite -- then
move on with their lives. Too bad director John
Irvin's "Ghost Story" is a convoluted chop job of
the book with four imminent actors literally
thrown into the plot. The film begins with four
old men, Ricky (Fred Astaire), John (Melvyn
Douglas), Edward (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and Sears
(John Houseman) living in quaint domesticity in a
picturesque New England town. In the evenings,
they get together for tea and share tales of
terror around the old campfire, or, in this case,
fireplace.
All, however, is not a postcard! Seems the boys
are having a bit of trouble catching their winks.
A series of disjointed nightmares about a rotting
corpse ensue. But before we can invest in the
terror of their subconscious, there's an abrupt
and jarring cutaway to a fashionable New York
apartment where a naked David Wanderley (Craig
Wasson) finds his bathtub filling up. He also
discovers a mysterious equally naked woman (Alice
Krige) face down on a pillow in his bed. When he
flips the seemingly harmless babe over it turns
out to be a wormy disgusting corpse and David
plunges to his death. Now we are introduced to the
Mayor of the small New England town -- Edward
Wanderley (Fairbanks). He calls his other son, Don
(also Wasson -- presumably because the film's
budget precluded two actors from participating) to
tell him about his brother's "accidental" death.
Don immediately comes home. But then Don learns
about his father's club and, after daddy
unexpectedly drowns Don regales the remaining
members with a story of haunted romance. Seems he
was a reasonably successful professor in Florida
when he met Alma Mobley (Krige). The two are hot
and heavy even though she throws out practically
every sign known to man that she's a few apples
short of a pie. Then the affair turns ugly and Don
is sure that David has been killed by Alma who is
really Eva, the ghost of the woman that Ricky,
John, Edward and Sears killed nearly a half a
century before. Go figure!
The plot, such as it is, simply does not work.
There's no provocation for Eva/Alma wanting either
Don or David dead; no reason why Eva/Alma should
wait sixty years to take vengeance on her killers
(e.g. an anniversary, a birthday, a round number…
sixty years to the day, this sort of drivel), no
explanation why the deaths occur in the order that
they do; no logic behind Alma's invitation to Don
that she's "going to take him to places he's never
been," and, finally; no reason why Mark
Chamberlin, the actor who plays young John should
look more like a youthful Fred Astaire than Tim
Choate, the actor who plays Astaire's character
Ricky as a youth.
This is not a cohesive narrative but a series of
disjointed vignettes and bits of dry melodrama
strung together with the hope that an audience
will "get it" in the end. The film is big on
gratuitous nudity -- so much that a few scenes
could technically be classified as soft-core porn.
Wasson is not an actor. He's a marionette,
overplaying his hand like a prize ham. It's tragic
to see the likes of Douglas and Astaire
desperately trying to save face in this dismal
excursion that ends as abruptly and absurdly as it
begins.
Albert Whitlock's traveling matte effects --
usually masterpieces of flawless escapism -- on
this outing are obvious and, in some cases,
laughable. Watch for the scene where naked David
plummets to his death through a plate glass
ceiling into a swimming pool. It's the same
slow-motion technical effect used in "Psycho"
during the scene where Detective Arbogast (Martin
Balsam) descends the stairs with a knife wound to
his face. But that was 1960. Hardly worked then --
definitely doesn't work now, and "Ghost Story" is
a film unable to even begin to pucker up to the
blood-soaked shower curtain of Hitchcock's most
gruesome thriller.
As Universal's DVD packaging heralds, "The time
has come to tell the tale." Indeed -- this one's a
stinker! This disc has been mastered from a film
print, not an original negative. As a result,
there are age-related artifacts throughout this
presentation. Although they do not distract, they
nevertheless degrade the visual material. The
anamorphic DVD exhibits colors that can be nicely
balanced. But on the whole there's a decided pasty
quality to the film. Blacks are deep and, for the
most part, solid. Flesh tones are way too pink.
Fine film grain is present throughout. Details are
generally nicely realized. A hint of edge
enhancement is present as well as shimmering of
fine details. Neither is distracting. The audio is
2.0 stereo with a characteristically dated
fidelity. The only extra is a theatrical trailer. |
