Ghost Story (1981)

I remember reading the book in High School and loving it. Then in predictable fashion I rented the movie and thought, "That's it?"

The book was cool because what started out as a regular ghost story turned into a much more supernatural creature story, but the movie jettisoned all of that for the more traditional Ghost Story.

It did have Craig Wasson's wisp of a penis in it though.

It's been a while (12 years?! Yeesh!) since I've read it, but you know the finale of the film? That occurs about three qusrters of the way through the book and then it keeps going. It has a real apocalyptic vibe in the town, which is represented in a much more vibrant way in the book. It has a real Dickens feel to it with it's sprawling characters.

Plus it's by Peter Straub, and while he often gets lumped in with Stephen King (who I do like), Straub is a much better writer.

Of course I could be remembering fondly back to a time when I had horrible taste. I used to like Dean Koontz. A lot.

Alice Krige could be creepy eating cereal though.

I'd only seen a bit of it on cable before I rented it via Netflix 2 months ago after the special CHUD show that was devoted to it. Wasson's death certainly required me to rewind it several times and laughing more and more each time.

It's really creepy. That's for sure. I need to read the book too. I know the 2 other ghosts are supposed to be major antagonists in the book, and in the movie their roles are really small.

That's kind of the whole movie in a nutshell. They try hard, but they streamline the shit out of the book to the point where the movie seems really small in comparison. When your big climax revolves around dragging a car out of a lake, it can't help but feel kind of "so what?"

The ghoul makeup on Alice Krige was kind of brilliant, though.

Yeah, the Wikipedia entry I read made the book seem WAY more epic than the movie. It was still great seeing 4 veterans of film acting together. 3 of them this being their last film.

It's not a bad film, but I saw it AFTER reading the book, and was very dissapointed that so much was left out.
Fred Astaire was great, though.

This is definitely one worth redoing as a film/mini-series with all the missing elements put back in. Amongst other things, the movie just makes it look like they were being haunted by a person while the book makes it clear they were never human to begin with.

A part of me wants this remade so Gene Hackman can come out of retirement to play Sears James.

Much better way to go out than Welcome to Mooseport.

I found this movie mostly enjoyable. At least on a cast level. It's really the GRUMPY OLD MEN or COCOON of horror movies. For some reason I find Houseman endlessly engaging, which is weird since he's so incredibly inert emotionally.