Sunday, April 15, 2018

267. The Ghost

267. The Ghost aka Lo spettro (1963)
Director: Riccardo Freda
Writers: Oreste Biancoli and Riccardo Freda from a story by Orest Biancoli
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org

A woman convinces her lover to murder her husband, but the pair begin to suspect they’re being haunted by his ghost.

Scotland, 1910. We open with the end of a séance. The master of the house, Dr. John Hichcock, has a degenerative disorder that’s left him disabled. He has very little strength in his limbs and has to use a wheelchair to get around. His doctor, Dr. Charles Livingstone, is administering a treatment designed by Dr. Hichcock, namely injecting Hichcock with poison and then the antidote. The hope is that the poison will reinvigorate Hichcock’s limbs. During the first treatment we see, Hichcock reminds Charles that, according to documents already signed by Hichcock, Charles will be held blameless in the event of Hichcock’s death. Charles could simply not deliver the antidote and not face any consequences. Hichcock then tries to poison himself, but Charles stops him.

After Charles leaves, he passes Hichcock’s wife, Margaret, entering the house. Hichcock witnesses the brief meeting from the window. When she enters the room, Hichcock bullies her a bit, then tries to shoot himself. Margaret stops and disarms him. He accuses her of having feelings for Charles and wanting him dead.

That night, Margaret and Charles meet up because they are having an affair and do want Hichcock dead. Which raises the question of why they each individually stopped him from killing himself. Margaret begs Charles to kill Hichcock, but he refuses.

And then the next day withholds the antidote and Hichcock dies.

Anyway, strange things start happening around the house. Margaret and Charles hear Hichcock’s bell ring, his wheelchair falls down the stairs, and the maid starts channeling Hichcock’s voice. The key to the safe containing all of Hichcock’s money is missing and Margaret and Charles have to root around in the corpse’s pockets to find it. Once they open the safe, it’s empty.

Things escalate gradually until Margaret starts to suspect Charles is actually gaslighting her: he opened the safe when she wasn’t present and then presented it being empty, the maid found Hichcock’s favorite snuff box in Charles’ room, and a treasure chest hidden beneath Hichcock’s coffin is empty meaning someone else got to it first.

And breaking form, I’ll leave the rest unsaid. The movie is in the public domain so easy to watch if you want to satisfy your curiosity. THE END (of this synopsis)

A gothic haunted house tale starring Barbara Steele. I can’t even say how excited I was for this. Steele is a solid actor and adds real panache to any old-school horror film she’s in. She manages to play her roles at just the right point between damsel in distress and femme fatale, each character possessing innocence touched by darkness or darkness tempered by innocence. That precise sense of no one being wholly good or evil is what makes gothic stories interesting—the monster is sympathetic and the heroes don’t walk away untouched by what they’ve seen. Having said that, I wish I’d enjoyed this movie more.

Despite the solid, if predictable premise—I was assuming some gaslighting situation from the start—things move too slowly. It takes a little bit for Hichcock to die and it’s a bit confusing when you see Charles and Margaret both try to keep him from killing himself. The movie would have been more interesting if they weren’t having an affair and instead were tormented by the vengeful ghost of this petty paranoiac. That they do murder him validates his suspicions and kind of justifies his actions.

Also, there’s not enough haunting. I’m thinking of other ghost/gaslight stories I’ve written up here, and there’s just a lot more incident in those films. This has a phantom bell, a chair falling down a stairwell, and two incidences of seeing Hichcock’s ghost. Otherwise it’s just the stress of being seen as suspicious and gradually suspecting each other. Those elements would be fine, but they’re too spread out over the movie. The film never commits to its ambitions.

Another disappointment was the drab sets and cinematography. Gothic horror like this generally provides some entertainment just in seeing the exteriors and the creepy haunted house sets the crew has put together. In The Ghost, we get one nice exterior of the manor at the beginning and that’s it.

In the end, I didn’t feel like the movie lived up to its promise. IMDB users collectively give this 6.2 stars which is considerably higher than most of the movies I’ve watched, but it missed the mark for me. Much like yesterday’s movie, Alien Contamination, the movie lacked a certain energy. However, for a rainy Sunday afternoon or a nice bit of background for a midnight Halloween party, this may be just what you’re looking for. As I mentioned above, the movie is in the public domain and I’ve added an MPEG2 copy to archive.org here.

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