Are you troubled by strange sounds in the middle of the night?
Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic?
Have you or any of your family ever seen a spook, specter or a ghost?
If the answer is yes, pick up your phone and call the professionals: GHOSTB…I mean Frank Bannister, a true shameless conman that will suck all your money out of your pocket faster than the closet mouth in Carol Anne’s bedroom.
We’re in the small coastal town of Fairwater where Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox), a chronically depressed “psychic investigator“, drives around in his rusty, yellow Volkswagen Beetle like a madman, throwing away a handful of business cards at random funerals, and does his best to make a not-so earnest living. And here’s the thing: Frank is actually a psychic who can see ghosts clear as day, everywhere he goes, and even lives with three of them in his half-built hillside house: the gunslinger Judge, the disco afroman Cyrus, and the uncool ’80s nerd Stuart. Sounds fun. But instead of investigating real hauntings, Frank uses Cyrus and Stuart to stage false haunting scenarios so he can basically just come in, switch on the lights and write the check. How clever. Judge, on the other hand, is too old to spook around (yes, even ghosts can get old). I guess that being dead isn’t such a luxury, after all.
Then folks around the town start to die suddenly, at a high rate, while Frank sees numbers carved on peoples’ foreheads as a premonition, which seem to draw some connections with the dead notorious serial killer Johnny Bartlett. So, maybe it’s time to cut down the booze and start some serious ghost hunting. Well, that’s maybe easier said than done when Frank himself gets investigated by the FBI for being accused of killing his wife who died in a car accident after Frank’s reckless driving some years back. And if you thought Mulder was “spooky“, then say hello to Milton Dammers (Jeffery Combs). Yikes.
The Frighteners is truly something special, directed by Peter Jackson and co-written with his wife Fran Walsh. It blends the comedy and the “seriousness“ like Ghostbusters (1984) and the more cartoonish elements from Beetlejuice (1988), Casper (1995), and even some grimy true-crime elements. A script like this, with its many layers, subplots, slapstick comedy and more dark horror could easily have been an epic tonal disaster. But like a lightening in a bottle, it works.
There are a lot of colorful characters here and the three ghosts Frank lives with is just the tip of the iceberg. A particular standout here is Jeffrey Combs as Milton -Sieg Heil- Dammers. And there’s nothing shady about him. He only looks like if Adolf Hitler and Judge Doom had a baby, possessed by the paranoid ghost of Jim Carrey (don’t panic, Jim is alive and well, but you get the point). I could watch a whole spin-off with this guy. Then you have the cameo of none other than Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, I mean R. Lee Ermey, as a ghost who protects the local cemetery, and who can’t get enough to showcase his goddamn rights to the Second Amendment. God Bless America, you slimy fucking walrus-looking piece of shit! Rumors say that his screentime is taken from the Full Metal Jacket audition tapes.
Jake Busey certainly looks the part as Johnny (The Homicidal Maniac) with his dead eyes and hideous mouth. Michael J. Fox’s performance as the broken, depressed and desperate shell of a man is a big contrast of his signature role Marty McFly. Fox actually turned down the role as Edward Douglas in The Island of Dr. Moreau (yes, that one) to be in The Frighteners. And ‘boy, even though this wasn’t the biggest moneymaker at the box-office, we can say that he dodged a huge bullet. Dee Wallace also have a central role here as, well, that’s all I can say without slipping too much into spoilers. Danny Elfman gives a fitting and spooky Danny Elfman score, I at least can say.
The film goes heavy on CGI, all created by Wētā FX, who also did the visual effects for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Avatar movies and Van Helsing, to mention some. The post-production to add the visual effects took 18 intense months. After the 15 artists at Wētā was on the verge of getting burned-out, George Lucas’ company, Industrial Light & Magic, had to step in to give a helping hand. Sounds like a messy disaster already, but Universal was so impressed with the final cut that they wanted to release the film right away instead of waiting three months for October, which was its intended release. Not a good plan since the film barely made back its budget. And maybe the R-rating was a factor. Who knows.
In Norway, my home country, the film flopped so hard that it didn’t even survive the first week before it was pulled from the theaters. A prime example of how a flop does not equal a terrible product. The Frighteners holds up, 30 years after its release and is an absolutely delightful fun spookyride. And on October 26, (yes, tomorrow) the film gets a 4k/Blu-ray release from Arrow Video. Happy anniversary!
Director: Peter Jackson
Writers: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh
Country & year: USA/New Zealand, 1996
Actors: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace, Jake Busey, Chi McBride, Jim Fyfe, Troy Evans, Julianna McCarthy, R. Lee Ermey
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116365/
