Justin's Rating: Sunny days, pickin' up... CLOUDY ways! (Justin needs his music)
Justin's Review: This underrated tale is brought to you by director Peter Jackson, who also directed the gore-fest Dead Alive. It contains much of the same horror/comedy elements, with the gore turned down and the special effects turned up.

Frank Bannister (an oft-wooden Michael J. Fox) can see and communicate with the dead in a little seaside community. Instead of joining the now-defunct Psychic Friends Network, Bannister uses three ghost friends to haunt local residents in order to scare up cash (ack, bad pun, kill me now). However, a serial killer is on the loose, and only Bannister can see the culprit and identify the victims before their demise. He teams up with love interest Lucy (who is loyally in love with Bannister, despite having lost a husband and only gone out on one date with our hero) to stop the killer and outwit other various human elements that conspire to stop them.

I personally love this movie, and am very baffled why it was given shoddy treatment in the box office back in 1996. The special effects (lots of CGI for the ghosts and their doings) are cut-rate, even by today's standards. It's a dark comedy, balancing lighter moments with some pretty gruesome scenes. While Fox is not the most present character in this movie, his supporting cast more than makes up for it.

His three ghost friends are all unique: you have Judge (John Astin) who is falling apart from the 1800s, Stuart (the fifties geek), and Cyrus (the afro-70s black brother). Unfortunately, they do not get large amounts of screen time. FBI Special Agent Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs) steals the show as an extremely paranoid and quirky G-man. His irises are black, his facial expressions reminiscent of Bruce Campbell, and he gets the best lines in the films. Think Mulder from X-Files meets Ash from Army of Darkness.

The entire setting for the film gives great atmosphere, from the rainy cemetary to an abandoned hospital. The climax comes about an hour into the movie and tries to sustain itself while the heroes attempt to defeat the serial killer (splendidly played by Jake Busey). I'd say they were rather successful: I enjoyed every minute as if I was on a haunted house tour.

While there aren't as many comedic scenes as I'd like, the ones they do have are precious (and startling as they shift instantly into action and horror). Bannister's communication with the dead spirits are often abrasive and amusing, but he seems to take it all in stride.

And of course you gotta love the fact that everybody's favorite sheriff, Troy Evans, is smack in the middle of another movie. Poor guy, never saw the typcasting shark that bit his butt. He's played a cop in about every other movie he's done, from The Stand to Demolition Man to The Lawnmower Man.

So, on the next dark and stormy night, why not pick up this unique movie and write it up as your contribution for the "Big Budget--Box Office Flops" charity.

Mark's Rating: Unjustly overlooked minor classic...X out of Y
Mark's Review: This is right up there with Hudson Hawk as one of those films that completely bombed on release, in the UK as well as the USA, for no real reasaon at all. What is it with cinema audiences? Armageddon gets seemingly the entire population of the western world going to see it (few Russians, obviously, because they're portrayed as incompetent and lacking in technology) yet this gets hardly anyone, and doomed Michael J. Fox back into the land of the sitcom. Hell, I even liked Doc Hollywood...

This is directed by Peter Jackson, and is a bit of a change of direction for him, after "Bad Taste", "Meet The Feebles" and "Brain Dead". Oh hold on, he did do "Heavenly Creatures" with the lovely Kate Winslet, so maybe it isn't too much of a departure. Our man Michael is Frank Bannister, a psychic investigator who in actual fact has three ghost friends who scare people so Frank comes round and "exorcises" them for a substantial fee. But you've heard all this just above me with Justin's review, so I won't give you the same details again.

I think the thing that threw your average brain-in-neutral filmgoer is the way the film goes from comedy to full-on terror so cleverly that you don't notice its happening some of the time. A funny scene where Frank tries to avoid capture by security guards at a museum gala night turns nasty when he realises a woman he's had a public slanging match with will be the next victim. And so on. I disagree that Michael J. Fox's acting in this film is wooden—considering a normal case turns into finding a supernatural serial killer who murdered his wife, he does a pretty good job of conveying what he thinks may be a slow realisation that he may in fact be mad.

All in all, proof that people who go the cinema don't actually want anything in the slightest bit original or interesting.

Recommended for:
Halloween Parties
X-Files fans who want to know what Mulder will be like in 10 years

The Movie Store!
The Frighteners: Movie [VHS]
The Frighteners: Movie [VHS Widescreen]
The Frighteners: Movie [DVD]
The Frighteners: Soundtrack [CD]
The Frighteners by Michael Jahn: Book

Intermission!
One of the best tongue-in-cheek cameos The Frighteners presents is R. Lee Ermey playing the ghost of his Marine sergant character from Full Metal Jacket.

Groovy Quotes:

Cyrus: There's nothing worse than a bunch of pissed-off black brothers who are already dead!

Ray: [as a statue of Elvis floats across the room] He's alive!

Judge: When a man's jawbone drops off it's time to reassess the situation.

Dammers: My body is a roadmap of pain.

Bannister: You are SUCH an asshole.
Dammers: I'm an asshole... with an Uzi!

Dammers: Sheriff! You are violating my territorial bubble.

If you liked this movie, try these:
Ghostbusters
The X-Files
Dead Alive

Soundtrack Review: A good, Tim Burton-ish score by Danny Elfman that keeps the spirit of the movie alive. Mark: Don't know if you've mentioned this already, but it has a fantastic version of "Don't Fear The Reaper" played over the closing credits.