Ghost Story (1974) Reviews

• An excellent and atmospheric ghost story.

  artilevel2006-03-11

  I totally disagree with the other comments I've read here. I regard this as one of the best ghost stories I've seen. I love the atmosphere of it, the English gentlemen going to a luxurious country retreat, and the creepy feel of the place that the film conveys superbly. The music used is highly effective too, especially the scenes where the doll appears. The only scenes I wasn't that keen on were the ones shown in the lunatic asylum. I loved the scenes filmed in the country house with the three friends, from the moment they arrived to the final scenes. The 1920's music, and the McFadden character, {Murray Melvin} dancing to it, as he played a record, was a lovely touch that added to the enjoyment. It is the sort of house that I would love to visit for relaxation in beautiful surroundings, redolent of better times. It has been many years since I had the pleasure of seeing it, and I long for a DVD release of this wonderfully filmed ghost story.

• Pretty lacking ghost story

  Red-Barracuda2014-04-22

  Three college acquaintances spend time in an old Victorian mansion. One of them starts seeing visions of events from the previous century, involving a young woman who previously lived in the house. These hallucinations seem to involve an incident where her brother committed her to an insane asylum despite nothing actually being wrong with her. Ghost Story has a reasonably interesting cast at its disposal. It includes the ultra-camp Murray Melvin (The Devils, Barry Lyndon) as the effeminate host who invites the others to the mansion; friend of The Rolling Stones Marianne Faithful also stars in the role of the ghostly girl, while To the Manor Born's Penelope Keith also appears. But unfortunately, even with this cast there is terrible chemistry between the actors. Meaning its difficult becoming very involved in their story and it is a weak story at that. The narrative is split into two threads – the current day and the ghostly flashback – but the period story is far superior to the anaemic contemporary one. This means that when events return to the three foppish central characters the film really drags. There are admittedly some decent sequences in the ghostly section such as the scene in the asylum. But overall, there really isn't enough good material here to make this obscurity worth checking out.

• Very strange ghost story that fails in most aspects. What's wrong with Jam, by the way?

  poolandrews2011-12-28

  Ghost Story is set in 1930's England where two Duller (Vivian MacKerrell) & Talbot (Larry Dann) meet at a train station & recognise each other as both having been invited to the countryside to stay in a large manor house recently inherited by one of their old college buddies McFayden (Murray Melvin). Once Duller & Talbot arrive McFayden is rather vague about his plans but they try to make the best of it, in the middle of the night while in bed trying to sleep Talbot is attacked by a large porcelain doll which disappears as suddenly as it appeared. The following morning Talbot witnesses an argument between some people he has never seen before in the house which looks different than it did when he arrived but they also disappear quickly & the house returns to it's present state. Talbot thinks that McFayden & Duller are playing tricks but it turns out that McFayden invited the pair their to try & prove the existence of ghost's & whether his new house is haunted... This British production was co-written, produced & directed by Stephen Weeks & is a real oddball obscurity from the early 70's, until the recent 2009 British DVD this had only ever been released on VHS in the US once under the exploitative title Madhouse Mansion & had a few airings on UK telly but otherwise was pretty much impossible to watch. The script has three credited screenwriters & it felt to me like each of them had their own ideas & were pulling in the opposite direction to the other's which makes for a bit of a weird, jumbled mess of a film that simply didn't work for me. The three main character's are amongst the oddest & most eccentric you are likely to see, they are all just plain weird & it's impossible to relate to them or feel any sympathy or care about their story. Every scene the three are in is just so stiff, unnatural & strange I couldn't work out what I was watching. Of course some may like this odd feel but I most certainly didn't & what the hell's their problem with Jam? Then there's the extremely poor ghost story itself, I mean the script doesn't even offer up any good scares & the only memorable supernatural activity of note is when a large creepy lifelike doll comes to life but again it's at odds with the straight flashback style ghost story of terrible events in the past coming back to haunt the present aspect which many ghost stories consist of, the scenes featuring the doll feel like a killer toy film & the final twist when McFayden drives off & the dolls arm pokes out of the suitcase on the the back of the car feels like a million miles away from the dull supernatural ghost story that Talbot gets to experience. Even these flashbacks to the past have no logic, I mean at first Talbot experiences these visions in parts of the house where they happened while later he just has visions while looking at an old insane asylum sign, his behaviour & reaction feels so different to what any normal person might do that it I suspect the makers wanted him to come across as creepy, he's certainly more bizarre & creepy than the predictable & lame ghost story offered up. At just over 80 minutes Ghost Story feels a lot longer, not that much actually happens. Take away the living doll scenes & this isn't even much of a ghost story but more of a discovering past horrific events story that don't seem to have any great relevance to anything. Shot in real locations Ghost Story looks alright but the low budget lighting & camera-work might be a good or bad thing depending on your opinion. Personally I though it looked somewhat amateurish & like it was made cheaply for telly. Forget about any blood or gore as there isn't any but that's not what Ghost Story is about, it's about atmosphere & telling a story neither of which it does very well unfortunately since it's all over the place. This must have had a really low budget, the whole look & feel of it is cheap although it's a puzzle as to why this British production supposedly set entirely here in Britain was filmed in India. I personally didn't like the performances at all, everyone seemed to play it wrong & nothing seemed right or natural & it was all so awkward & odd. Ghost Story is a mess, the story has no great internal logic & the actual ghost story about a few patients escaping from an old insane asylum is lame, a living doll that might be alive or might be possessed or might be haunted is the only memorable aspect to this dull & dreary film notable for it's strangeness but little else. Not to be confused with the better Ghost Story (1981) starring Fred Astaire of all people.

• I Remember This From Years Ago...

  Theo Robertson2005-08-01

  ... Which means it was rather good or rather bad . I've got to confess I don't have any good memories of it It's set between the two world wars with three spiffing English chums staying at a mansion where one of them finds himself transported to the same location in Victorian times . The strange is that while he can see and hear the characters in Victorian times they can't see or hear him . The whole effect is unintentionally funny as the " time traveler " hides behind doors as soon as he hears people approach The story revolves around a young woman being committed to a lunatic asylum by her brother even though she's not mentally ill . One of her relatives tries to free her only to unlock the cell of a raving psycho who kills her and frees the other inmates . While all sorts of people were detained in these asylums in Victorian times GHOST STORY unforgivably gives the impression that being mentally ill is the same as being a violent nutter and there's a sequence where the villain is given a shave by one of the lunatics wearing a top hat , smoking a cigar and carrying a giant knife who is now running the asylum . This whole sequence would have been laugh out loud funny if it wasn't so objectionable . I do realise that a ghost story is not the same as a horror story so it's wrong to criticise it for being something it's not . However the director fails to produce any type of tension or atmosphere with the whole feel of the movie being sterile and static and if my long lasting impression of GHOST STORY is anything to go by I'm in no hurry to ever see this movie ever again

• Bizarre, eccentric cinema equals a good and quite unnerving film. MILD SPOILERS

  ContinentalOp2011-10-05

  'Ghost Story' is a pseudo-surrealist and dreamlike film. The plot is quite simplistic in a technical sense. In the 1920s or early 1930s, McFadden (Murray Melvin) invites two fellow university students to his mansion. One is Talbot, a somewhat nervous and mild fellow, and another more forceful and rude friend who leaves the house earlier in the film as his relationship with McFadden - more of an acquaintance than a real friend - doesn't really warrant him staying in a place he obviously finds uninteresting. Talbot, on the other hand, does stay and experiences ghostly occurrences involving a Victorian doll and ''dreams'' of an insane asylum which is the key to haunting's in McFadden's newly inherited mansion. The film is low-budget but well directed by Stephen Weeks, a very underrated filmmaker who also filmed 'I, Monster' which was one of the closer adaptations of R.L. Stephenson's 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'. The films have similarities and differences. Whilst 'I, Monster' was quite straight forward in its direction, 'Ghost Story' had more surrealist touches woven into its imagery; scenes often jump back and forward from the world of dreams to reality, blending together creepily. In fact the film itself is rather dreamlike with interesting camera work and photography which, when mixed with the imagery of the Victorian doll and the scenes of the asylum, make the film unsettling and disturbing. The filming location was in Tamil Nadu Indian, though the locations chosen pass for very beautiful, yet eerie locations that are found in England. Another interesting aspect of the film is that it was co-written by Rosemary Sutcliff, more famously a writer of historical fiction, most famously the tremendously popular 'The Eagle of the Ninth', and Philip Norman, an author and playwrite most famous for his biography of the Beatles 'Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation'. The film is also of interested to fans of M.R. James and other writers of the 20s as it is set in the same era and has a similar feel to those works of literature that are now often found in omnibuses of classic ''ghost stories''. 'Ghost Story' is an underrated and nearly forgotten horror film, which beautifully paints a cinematic treat of unsettling scenes and images instead of going for shock and gore.