Ghost Story (1981)

Directed by John Irvin. Starring Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, John Houseman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Alice Krige, Craig Wasson, Patricia Neal, Jacqueline Brooks, Mark Chamberlin, Tim Choate, Kurt Johnson, Ken Olin, Miguel Fernandes, Lance Holcomb. [R]

A quartet of elderly friends with a passion for telling each other horror stories in their men’s club find themselves in a horror story of their own when the past comes back to haunt them in the (spectral?) form of a deceased woman (Krige) they all knew many, many years ago. Tepid fright flick with more accidental laughs than chills—check out the naked man plummeting out of an apartment tower window; there should have been more pleasures in seeing the veterans work with each other (including Neal as one of the men’s wives), but Astaire looks unhappy, and the dialogue and storytelling are messy. Photographer Jack Cardiff’s tableaux of clammy shadows and unnatural light provides intermittently spooky atmosphere; Philippe Sarde’s unintuitive score sounds lost in the reeds. The men’s club, by the way, is called the Chowder Society; split the difference with a “head,” and you’re on the right track. Based on a novel by Peter Straub. Final feature film for Astaire, Fairbanks, and Douglas; the latter passed away a few months prior to the film’s release.

41/100