Ghost Story

Director: John Irvin
Writer: Lawrence D Cohen
Producer: Burt Weissbourd
Cast: Alice Krige, Craig Wasson, Fred Astaire
No, seriously: Fred Astaire
Country: USA
Year of release: 1981
Reviewed from: DVD screener (Second Sight)

When I was offered a screener of Ghost Story, which will be/was released on DVD and blu-ray in December, I assumed that it was the 1974 British film directed and produced by Stephen Weeks. I happily accepted a copy because that’s a film I’d never seen. It turns out that this is the other Ghost Story, a 1981 Hollywood adaptation of Peter Straub’s 1979 hernia-inducing 700-page bestseller. No worry, I’ve not seen that either.

But reducing a book that big to 110 minutes of screen time means there’s very little of the actual story here. The novel is structured around eerie stories told among a group of four aged friends in front of a roaring fire. There’s some lip service to this at the start but it has no bearing on the main plot whatsoever.

Basically, when they were dashing young men in the 1920s, these four all collectively fell in love with a young lady, whom they wooed en masse. A terrible accident led to her accidental murder, a death in which they were all complicit. Now her ghost has come back, in an intermittently corporeal/ethereal form. The corporeal version seduces and becomes engaged to the son of one of the old men. When they split up, she becomes engaged to his brother, who subsequently throws himself out of a tower block window (a really lousy effects shot which opens the film). Their father also dies in mysterious circumstances which are recorded as suicide but we can see were ghost-induced. The remaining son finds a photo of the four pals from 50 years ago, with a woman whom he recognises as his ex-fiancee.

You can see where all this is going. The plot and characters of Ghost Story are as generic and obvious as the title. The script by Lawrence D Cohen, who had written Carrie five years previously and would later produce It and The Tommyknockers, has an uneven, unbalanced structure. There’s a whole load of stuff about the old men, then we get an extended flashback to the story of the son and his spooky girlfriend, then he wants to join the ghost story telling sessions in lieu of his father, then we get a second long flashback to the 1920s. Then finally, one of the other old geezers having croaked, the remaining two and the young fella attempt to resolve the situation by visiting the house where it all happened.

There are some curious brief scenes with a strange homeless guy and a creepy kid who presumably were significant in the book but whose presence in the film is as unexplained as it is pointless. The finale contains a number of inexplicable ellipses and includes a scene that was right royally ripped off by the feature film version of The Woman in Black.

Not nearly as bad as sometimes painted, Ghost Story is just a bit middling. It’s a major Hollywood Studio trying to do a horror film without really wanting to scare anyone. It seems curiously out of time. Was this really released in 1981? Just to put that in context, here’s a list of genre films released that same year: An American Werewolf in London, Basket Case, Cannibal Ferox, The Beyond, Friday the 13th Part 2, Halloween II, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, The House by the Cemetery, Mad Max 2, Ms. 45, Scanners, Superman 2, Time Bandits, Escape from New York, The Evil Dead, The Howling and of course Raiders of the Lost Ark. Cinema had changed completely, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Ghost Story.

As if to emphasise how old-fashioned this is, the four old men are played by Melvyn Douglas (born 1901), John Houseman (born 1902), Douglas Fairbanks Jr (born 1909 but looking more decrepit than the others) and Fred Astaire (born 1899, who looks like a ventriloquist’s dummy). Craig Wasson (Schizoid, Nightmare on Elm Street 3) plays both sons (they’re meant to be twins but I didn’t notice and it’s not significant). But the main reason to watch this film is Alice Krige: monumentally hot, frequently undressed, dominating the action, smouldering on screen and letting loose one or two awesome screams. Dick Smith’s always excellent make-up provides the ickiness.

The four young versions of the main characters, who look so unlike the old stars that you literally can’t tell who is meant to be which, were played by Ken Olin (later a TV director on shows like Sleepy Hollow, The West Wing and Alias), Mark Chamberlin (Christmas Evil), Tim Choate (Babylon 5) and Kurt Johnson (who died just five years later). Way down the cast list you can spot a pre-Star Trek Robin Curtis making her debut. Cinematography was courtesy of the great Jack Cardiff; it looks fabulous, but horror films shouldn't look fabulous. The snowy New England locales full of wealthy WASPs give this the appearance of a TV Christmas special. The only black faces in the film are a handful of extras in scenes at the liberal arts college where Casson's character teaches.

The 2015 UK blu-ray/DVD from Second Sight includes a commentary by director John Irvin and interviews with Straub, Cohen plus producer Burt Weissbourn, Krige, and visual effects guys Albert Whitlock and Bill Taylor, plus trailers and TV spots.

MJS rating: B

Mystics in Bali

Director: H Tjut Djalil
Writer: Jimmy Atmaja
Producers: Abdul Muis Sofian, Hendry Katili, Sri Gunawan
Cast: Ilone Agathe Bastian, Yos Santo, Itje Trisnawati
Year of release: 1981
Country: Indonesia
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Mondo Macabro)

You can’t go wrong with Indonesian horror movies - they’re unashamedly bonkers. Mystics in Bali is allegedly one of the best - for some value of best - and is another terrific presentation from Mondo Macabro, purveyors of international weirdness to the discerning cinephile.

German tourist Ilone Agathe Bastian stars as American Kathy Keen. I’ll just repeat that in case you think you must have misread it - the female lead in this film is played not by an Indonesian actress, not by an American actress, not even by the director’s girlfriend but by a passing German tourist! This is the quality of film-making we’re dealing with.

Yos Santo - a skinny bloke with bushy hair and a small moustache - plays her Indonesian friend Mahendra. Kathy wants to write a book about black magic and Mahendra somehow introduces her to a master of the strongest, most primitive magic known to man - Leak (or Leyak). This turns out to be a mad old crone, all long fingernails, straggly hair and tatty clothes (not unlike the basic appearance of the evil sorcerer in Pemuja Cakar Iblis). The crone reappears in various guises, gradually getting younger, but the main thing she does is laugh. She positively screeches, over and over again (you can hear a mercifully brief clip of it at the end of the title sequence of the Mondo Macabro TV series, of which the episode about Indonesian movies is included here).

Our first touch of weirdness is when the crone shakes hands with Kathy and departs, leaving her detached hand which scuttles off when Kathy drops it to the ground. Over time Kathy learns more and more leyak magic from the ‘Leyak Queen’ and comes more and more under her power, to the consternation of Mahendra and his uncle, who once fought a leyak wizard (or something).

The young couple’s second meeting with the crone is extremely odd, and not just because we cut from one night scene to another with no indication that it’s 24 hours later. The witch is unseen this time, hiding in a bush, from which extends a slightly forked ten-foot tongue. “Have you brought the things I asked you to bring?” she asks, despite not having asked them to bring anything. And indeed they have - some small jewels and about eight pints of blood in glass bottles. No, it’s not explained...

Leyak magic gives its practitioners the ability to transmogrify themselves and we see this in action when the two women (Kathy having learned to screech with laughter properly) turn into pigs. This is achieved initially by crude bladder effects on their faces, then showing them running around wearing - I am not making this up - inflatable pig costumes. They then drop to all fours and, by the miracle of crap editing, become genuine live pigs.

That’s all well and good, but you can see crawling disembodied hands and people turned into pigs anytime (try a double bill of The Addams Family and Time Bandits). About halfway into the 80-minute feature we get what we’ve been waiting for, the image promised on the sleeve and the disc menu: Kathy’s disembodied floating head, complete with internal organs suspended beneath it.

The crone/witch/woman/thing wants Kathy’s head to do her evil work and sends it flying off through a mix of blue-screen work and a prop on a wire. Unwitting accomplice Kathy develops big vampire fangs when her noggin detaches and goes off to munch down on a baby as it’s being born - although the camera angle frankly makes this scene look more like lesbian muff-diving. Sorry, but it does.

Later we see the two women transform again - into snakes. Yes, Mystics in Bali is another snake-woman film, though it only just scrapes into that increasingly prolific genre because they’re not ‘snake-women’ per se, just women who can turn into animals, including on one occasion snakes. However, on the plus side the extras include an image of a poster for a movie called The Hungry Snake Woman (starring Indonesian horror legend Suzzanna) which clearly is a version of ‘The Snake King’s Daughter’. Another one to try and track down...

Mahendra’s uncle meanwhile knows that the best way to defeat the monster that Kathy has become is to prevent her guts-dangling head from reattaching to her body. This leads to the traditional climactic magical fight, yada yada yada.

It’s slow to start but once it gets going Mystics in Bali is top quality trash (there’s a bit of travelogue-style footage of Indonesian dancing early on to tempt tourists, though any promotional effort is rather undone by the suggestion that the country is home to cackling witches and flying vampire heads). The special effects are surprisingly sophisticated until one realises that what looks like an early 1970s movie was actually made in 1981. The best effect is in the final battle when the witch and the uncle fire animated bolts of energy at each other, tipped with grasping claws. Which is quite cool. (For a better, CGI-based flying vampire head effect, check out the 2002 Thai film Demonic Beauty.)

The dubbing is diabolical, with Mahendra in particular falling. Into the William. Shatner school of. Unnecessary pauses. Mondo Macabro’s print comes from the original negative and looks far better than the film deserves. It’s a terrific widescreen transfer with a bit of scratching, especially at reel ends, and the colour on some of the night scenes is a tad screwy, but that really doesn’t detract from the hoopla on screen.

As extras we get the aforementioned 25-minute documentary, which includes interviews with the director, special effects bloke El Badrun (who is clearly bonkers) and various producers and actors - including the living legend that is Barry Prima. There are clips from The Warrior, Satan’s Slave (no, not the Norman J Warren film!) and one of my all-time favourite pieces of Asian lunacy, The Devil’s Sword - directed by the aforementioned Mr Badrun! There’s an excellent and very informative essay on Mystics and its place in Indonesian exploitation cinema, and even an article on ‘how to become a leyak practitioner’ which reads like it has been copied from an old book, but unfortunately neither essay nor article are credited. There’s a complete filmography of director H Tjut Djalil (Lady Terminator) too.

Mystics in Bali is the on-screen title here but the film was apparently released as Balinese Mystic in Australia, a more likely location of potential tourists. Djalil does say in the documentary that the lead character is Australian and this is reinforced by a bit of poster copy reproduced on the IMDB, although the dialogue is unequivocal about Kathy being from the USA, which raises the possibility that the Aussie retitling might indicate a completely different dub. The other title sometimes given for the film is Leak, presumably used domestically. It is based on a novel called Leak Ngakak by local author Putra Mada.

Who would have thought that a film like this, in a terrific presentation and with an excellent bunch of extra goodies, would ever be for sale on the British high street? What an odd world we live in. Anyone with a fondness for Pacific Rim insanity should buy a copy of this straightaway. It’s a truly terrible film, but it is an absolute must-see. And if it sells enough, perhaps Mondo Macabro will release a similarly well-transferred and well-packaged version of The Devil’s Sword so that I can ditch my battered old ex-rental VHS copy.

MJS rating: A-

review originally posted 20th March 2005

The Kung Fu Emperor

Director: Pao Shiue-Li
Writers: China Shu-Mei, Ni Kung
Producer: Kou Fei
Cast: Din Lung, Shy Sy, Taur Ming-Ming
Country: Hong Kong
Year of release: 1981
Reviewed from: UK VHS (Movie Makers)

The first question with any chop-socky film is: how much can one trust what is on the sleeve? In this case the photos on the back are from another film (one of them appears to show Bruce Le) while the sword-wielding warrior in the painting on the front isn’t even Chinese! It actually looks very much like Barry Prima, suggesting that the artwork may have been ripped off from one of the Warrior movies.

On the other hand the vague blurb on the back seems to match the plot of the film and the credit block on the front matches the on-screen credits exactly. Even the title, Kung-Fu Emperor, is the same, give or take an article and a hyphen. The film, originally Gung Foo Wong Dai, has also been released as Ninja: The Kung Fu Emperor.

In this visually splendid and surprisingly enjoyable historical martial arts tale, the elderly Emperor of the Ching dynasty (who can barely walk, let alone do kung fu) has 14 sons by 14 different mothers, 13 of whom are martial arts experts while one, the Fourth Son, prefers to study books. Except that he has a master - hairless apart from bushy eyebrows and a trailing wisp from a large mole, given to wearing a red and yellow turban which makes him look a bit like the Blue Rajah in Mystery Men - who is secretly teaching him kung fu. The Emperor’s major-domo, Lord Long, has designs on the throne which he plans to see pass to the Fourteenth Son whom he will install as a puppet ruler.

Useful to know at the start, but not mentioned until near the end of the film, is the fact that the Emperor’s will, announcing which of his 14 sons will succeed him, is hidden in the booby-trapped rafters of the palace. When an attempt is made to steal the will, thwarted by a squad of guards, Lord Long suspects the Ninth Son (who is the best fighter) and has him killed by a grinning henchman in a fake hunting accident. On his mentor’s advice, the Fourth Son sets out to journey around the kingdom until the heat cools off.

He meets two street-performing acrobats, Brother Bai and Brother Gan, and acquires a comic relief servant (who isn’t too irritating). However, in one of several terrific fight sequences, the Fourth Son is cut with a poisoned knife. He and his companions are taken in by the daughter of an innkeeper, whose father was killed while trying to break up a previous fight. She takes them to the secret lair of her mistress, a counter-revolutionary plotting the overthrow of the Ching dynasty, who is fortunately out-of-town. When the mistress does show up (on horseback), she is just in time to demonstrate her superb swordfighting skills against Lord Long’s henchmen who have come calling. Afterwards, however, there is a tense stand-off when she discovers that she has been protecting a Ching prince. However, the Fourth Prince assures her that, should he ascend to the throne, he will rule fairly for the benefit of all the people.

When news comes through that the Emperor is on his deathbed, the friends enter the palace along with the Prince’s master and a couple of Shaolin monks who are his acolytes. Amid much fighting, Brother Bai manages to locate the will which says that the 14th Prince will inherit the throne. The Fourth Prince’s mentor slyly changes ‘14th’ to ‘4th’ - which, in Chinese, requires the addition of a couple of strokes of the quill - and has the document replaced.

When the Emperor finally expires, the remaining sons gather to hear Lord Long read the will. He is sure that it has been tampered with so more fighting ensues between his goons and the Princes who are all good mates and frankly don’t mind which of them becomes Emperor.

This seems to have been the final feature from director Pao Shiue-Li (aka Hsueh Li Pao) whose previous films included Boxer from Shantung, The Iron Bodyguard and The Inheritor of Kung Fu. Though the plot may be wafer-thin, the photography by Yue Kim Fay is good and the set design is sumptuous. Above all, the fights are great, mixing kung fu with a variety of pole and blade skills. Often there are a couple of dozen people fighting in one (fairly lengthy) shot, all kicking, punching and slicing away. The IMDB credits Chen Mu Chuan (Iron Monkey) as ’action director’, who may or may not be the ‘martial arts director Chan Pon Chu’ credited on screen and on the sleeve.

Among the cast, Shy Sy (aka Szu Shih) was in Three Supermen Against the Orient, Martial Arts of Shaolin and Hammer’s The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires while Din Lung (aka Lung Ti) was in The One-Armed Swordsman Returns, The New One-Armed Swordsman, Shatter (the other film which Hammer shot in Hong Kong), Revenge of the Zombies, The Magic Blade and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow I and II. Tang Too-Liang was in The Hot, the Cool and the Vicious and Shaolin Invincibles while Chen Shing was in Ninja Terminator and Deadly Silver Spear.

I really enjoyed The Kung Fu Emperor, but what makes the film extra special is an oddly comic sequence when the characters consider returning to the palace in disguise and we see three ’might have been’ scenes - unfulfilled flash-forwards I suppose you could call them. In one, they make themselves up to look sick and enter as disease victims, in another they don masks and costumes and enter as a performing troupe (singing ‘There’s No Business Like Showbusiness’!) - this is shown on the US DVD sleeve. But in the middle of these two hypotheticals, we see what might happen if they entered the castle disguised as vampires! Proper Chinese hopping vampires, with the spells on paper on their foreheads and everything. Fantastic!

MJS rating: B+

review originally posted 17th May 2006