By Ben Bussey
Ask anyone to name a high-profile studio horror movie from the dawn of the 1980s with a big name cast based on a best selling novel, and odds are most of us will reply The Shining. However, when Warner Bros, Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson and co were busy adapting Stephen King’s third book, they were not the only ones bringing a popular horror fiction of the day to the screen in a lavish manner. Roughly the same time over at Universal, producer Burt Weissbourd had enlisted director John Irvin, original Carrie screenwriter Lawrence D Cohen, esteemed cinematographer Jack Cardiff, and a quite remarkable cast of aged screen legends – Fred Astaire, John Houseman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Melvyn Douglas and Patricia Neal – along with a few younger, comparatively unknown actors to adapt Peter Straub’s 1979 novel Ghost Story. Neither Kubrick’s King adaptation nor Irwin’s Straub adaptation exactly set the world on fire on release, yet three-and-a-half decades on there’s no debate that Kubrick’s movie made the bigger mark, whilst Irwin’s movie, if it’s remembered at all, is typically noted only for being the final film made by almost all of its senior stars. But now, as Second Sight release Ghost Story in the UK (in an edition borrowing its content from the Scream Factory edition released in the US and Canada last month), we can see for ourselves whether there’s anything more to be said for this less-celebrated literary horror adaptation.
I should stress right away that I have never read Ghost Story, nor anything else by Peter Straub, so I came to this movie with very few preconceptions, aside perhaps from a curiosity as to what about it would warrant its 18 certificate (particularly given that the aforementioned The Shining has long since been downgraded to a 15). Strangely, the BBFC’s webpage on the film notes the approved version is uncut but does not explain their rating decision, which I can only assume is down to the brief but fairly explicit sex scene and the abundance of nudity – none of which, I should emphasise, involves any of those old dudes, just in case you’re getting creeped out already. But in a curious way, this information alone gives us a sense of the peculiar split personality on display in Ghost Story. On the one hand it harks back to a bygone era, where the actors took the spotlight over the effects, and the tension and atmosphere was built largely on what was implied; and on the other, it’s a product of the early 1980s, when the prevailing maxim for horror was to show everything in detail, and often. Factor in the twisty-turny, time-hopping nature of the narrative (which, I gather, jettisons a substantial portion of Straub’s novel), and it’s small wonder that the resulting film, while intriguing, is somewhat untidy.
Astaire, Douglas, Houseman, and Fairbanks Jr are the Chowder Society. You know they’re old fashioned, because a) they’re all really old, b) they call themselves ‘the Chowder Society,’ and c) they wear tuxedos to casual get-togethers at which they sit around smoking cigars, drinking brandy and swapping ghost stories by the firelight. However, it seems the most chilling story the four men really know is their own. Yes, in the time-honoured tradition the old friends share a dark secret from their younger days – and, just to follow that time-honoured tradition through to its logical conclusion, that secret now appears to be catching up with them as David Wanderley (Craig Wasson), the grown son of Edward (Fairbanks), dies suddenly under mysterious circumstances, falling from his plush New York apartment window. The authorities say it was suicide, but David’s twin brother Don (also Wasson, naturally) thinks otherwise, believing that it’s all the handiwork of a mysterious woman who entered their lives recently – and who, it seems, may not be a stranger to the Chowder Society either.
Screenwriter Lawrence D Cohen notes in the extras that the late 70s/early 80s was about the time that the TV mini-series format began to catch on, proving a more appropriate format for literary adaptions like Roots, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, and further down the line other King novels like The Stand and It. As such, Cohen expresses some regret that Universal were insistent on making Ghost Story a movie, as the mini-series format might not only have allowed for more of Straub’s text to reach the screen, it would also have given the whole thing a bit more breathing space. Even as someone who hasn’t read Straub’s novel, I can see how this is probably true. The film is trying to squeeze a hell of a lot into a running time of 115 minutes, and as a result it feels bloated and hard to digest. And this is a shame, because when it’s on form, there’s some really damn good stuff in here – paramount to which is Alice Krige’s work in the dual roles (or not?) of Alma and Eva.
Never mind that this was only her third role, whilst also proving the swansong of four Hollywood icons – from the moment she first appears there’s no question that Alice Krige completely owns Ghost Story. There’s a bit of a Mathilda May in Lifeforce vibe about her, as she is simultaneously the ultimate object of both desire and terror – and, as would later be the case with Ms May, she spends a good portion of her screen time naked – but Krige brings a great deal more to the table than mere eye candy. Even when she’s at her most human, there’s a constant sense that there’s more to her than meets the eye, something implacable going on beneath the surface which at once makes her more alluring, yet also profoundly sinister. In their scenes together, Craig Wasson (best known for De Palma’s Body Double, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3) comes off a bit feeble and nondescript by comparison, but that may be at least partially deliberate: he and Krige are quite literally from different worlds. All this being the case (and also taking into account how subjugated the women in the lives of the elder characters are, Patricia Neal included), it’s no doubt easy to read Ghost Story as a war of the sexes tale with misogynistic overtones – but at the same time, the film does show the fall-out of misogyny, and how it hurts not only the women that fall victim to it but also the men that act upon it.
Ghost Story is a curiosity for sure; a lavish blend of old and new horror, hugely out of step with the smaller-scale, down-and-dirty slasher and splatter films which tend to be mostly fondly remembered from the early 80s. It’s also largely uncharacteristic of its elder cast, none of whom, sad to say, give particularly striking performances; compare it to, say, Vincent Price’s iconic swansong in Edward Scissorhands, and there’s nothing too memorable about what Astaire, Fairbanks Jr and co bring to the screen here. And if we’re talking about early 80s horror movies which open on John Houseman telling a ghost story, make mine The Fog any day. Still, as a calling card for the jaw-dropping talents of Alice Krige, and a reminder that early 80s horror wasn’t always pure tits and gore, Ghost Story is certainly a film worth seeing and remembering, even if it isn’t necessarily one to cherish.
Ghost Story is out now on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK from Second Sight.