Life’s Too Short to Watch Bad Movies... Right?
I’m glad I’m not a paid movie critic. If I were, I’d have to watch and review whatever I was assigned, including some pretty dreadful stuff. Imagine you’re five or ten minutes into a movie so abysmal there’s no law in the universe capable of rescuing it (or you). In such cases, a mere 90 minutes can resemble the pain and agony of waiting all day at the Department of Motor Vehicles. At least you can take a book with you to the DMV.
Gene Siskel once mentioned how depressed he got over the wretched movies he had to watch and review. I don’t know if he meant depression in a general or clinical way, but I understand at least a part of what he felt. On the other hand, Siskel’s frequent across-the-aisle colleague Roger Ebert once said something to the effect that we must occasionally watch bad movies to remind us that life’s too short to watch bad movies.
A few years ago I watched the 1966-67 epic War and Peace, one of the most stunning, grand-scale creations in cinematic history, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. Looking at my movie notebook (don’t we all have one?) I noticed that in between halves of this seven-hour odyssey, I took a break with something completely different: Ghosthouse (aka La Casa 3, aka La Casa Fantasma, 1988).
(I know several fans of this movie. If you enjoy it, I’m sincerely glad. This is not meant as a slight to you.) I had no allusions whatsoever that Ghosthouse was a masterpiece of horror, but since it was on my Letterboxd watchlist and was on Amazon Prime, I clicked on “Watch Now.”
There comes a point during the first few minutes of practically any movie ever made in which the audience quickly determines (1) the level of money expended on the film’s budget, and (2) whether those limitations will become a hindrance or an asset. The list of horror filmmakers who have achieved much with little is a substantial one, including Herk Harvey (Carnival of Souls, 1962), George Romero (Night of the Living Dead,1968), and John Carpenter (Halloween, 1978), to name just a few. So it is possible to make a good movie on a slim budget.
Consider Ghosthouse’s director, Umberto Lenzi (1931-2017), who made several movies in various genres: Westerns, adventure, horror, giallo, thriller, and more. Lenzi was plagued throughout his career by inadequate budgets, but he made the best of each situation. Ghosthouse was shot in three weeks for 300 million lire (under $200,000). Considering how little money that was, even in 1988, you’re probably willing to cut Lenzi some slack. I’m all for celebrating creators who make the most of a challenging situation, even when they fail. I’ve also recognized that sometimes creators with the best ideas aren’t always capable of fully realizing their potential. It could have nothing to do with the creators, but rather money. Yet at other times, like the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), some people simply leave their money (or actual talent) buried in the ground.
In short, who am I to judge a filmmaker or his work? Well, if you’re a paid critic, that’s what they hire you to do, isn’t it?
A few people are paying me to do this (and a huge thank you to my paid subscribers), but I can choose to find Ghosthouse lacking, walk away, and never see it again. Or I can enjoy it on its own merits. Or maybe I can do both.
But let’s get to the movie itself. (By the way, I haven’t been keeping up, but I wonder how many times I’ve referred to Ghosthouse as a film and how many times I’ve referred to it as a movie…)
In 1967, Sam Baker (Alain Smith) discovers his 11-year-old daughter Henrietta (Kristen Fougerousse) hiding after taking a pair of scissors to the family cat. As punishment, Sam locks Henrietta in the cellar for a serious time-out. But Sam and his wife are soon murdered by a killer we can’t see, while Henrietta sits in the basement, clutching a hideous-looking clown doll. Oh, and there’s weird lullaby music accompanying the scene. (Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to examine this little tune again and again and again…)
20 years later, ham radio enthusiast Paul (Greg Rhodes) taps into the sound of two people screaming as they are attacked. Paul and his girlfriend Martha (Lara Wendel) track down the signal to a creepy, rundown house where they meet a suspicious caretaker named Valkos (Donald O’Brien) and four young people just hanging out: Jim (Martin Jay), who’s also into ham radio, his sister Tina (Kate Silver) and brother Mark (Ron Houck), and Mark’s girlfriend Susan (Mary Sellers). By now I’m sure you’ve guessed that this is the house where Henrietta’s parents were murdered. Strange things happen, and every few minutes we’re treated to (or incensed by) a young girl’s singsong chant, “Are you up? Are you there? Are you there?” (The last part sounds just a bit like “Are you dead?”)
Believability was low on the “Things to do” production list for Ghosthouse, and I’m not even talking about the weird stuff. After a brief meeting filled with suspicion and accusation, the four squatters begin working with Paul and Martha with a camaraderie worthy of the Peace Corps, seeking to discover the source of the voices heard on the radio. After Tina survives the equivalent of an earthquake inside a camper, she casually reenters it moments later without a care in the world. There’s also a hitchhiker/practical jokester (Willy M. Moon) whose character serves no purpose in the movie other than to have the audience wonder when he’ll get knocked off. (Sorry for the spoiler…)
And if you’re expecting great dialogue, don’t. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” “I’ve got the feeling that the worst is yet to come,” and “There’s something you don’t know about this place,” are some of the better lines emerging from Ghosthouse. Besides a pretty cool scene featuring a walking skeleton in a hooded black cape (with maggots crawling on its skull), there’s not much here to instill terror. The acting’s not good, but that often goes with the low-budget territory. Yet for all its problems, you can enjoy Ghosthouse, particularly if you watch it at the right time. If you’re in the mood for something like this, the experience is not exactly wasted. (Then again, maybe you’re wasted.)
Looking at my reading log (yes, I have one), I noticed that during this time I was reading The Iliad and Jane Austen’s Emma, two very different classics (so it’s not difficult switching back and forth between them). After I finished those, I didn’t read another classic, but rather a crime thriller, Dark Passage (1946) by David Goodis. Filmed in 1947 with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the novel Dark Passage isn’t a classic in the same way Homer and Austen are, but it’s quite good. I enjoyed it in a different way than I did Homer and Austen.
So there’s a place for movies like Ghosthouse. I’m glad they exist. They need to exist. I am, from time to time, going to watch and enjoy them on a certain level. I don’t mean to come across as a snob and don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but I couldn’t live on a steady diet of such movies, any more than I could live on a steady diet of the world’s greatest films, not without a breather now and then.
So excuse me for a while. I’m going to spend a couple of hours watching Sunset Boulevard (1950), a true classic, followed by, in all likelihood the B-picture The Return of the Whistler (1948). Go figure.
Whatever you watch this week, please do so guilt-free. Be well and stay safe.