Favourite GHOST movies

[Berferd]

Me? I enjoyed Poltergeist. Yeah, some of the violence was a bit gratuitous (I'm mostly thinking of the one guy who rips his own face off--I've read that that those are Steven Speilberg's hands during that scene. He said he liked to shock people, or something like that.) As far as the sequals go.. I didn't bother watching them. I saw enough of 'em in the commercials on TV. Just like the Jaws sequals, 30 seconds on TV was enough to know I didn't want to watch them.

(spoiler alert) Now, the Family Guy episode called Petergeist was hilarious. Peter Griffin rips off his face and what does he find underneath? None other than Hank Hill who laughs in Peter's voice about propane. lol Well done, Seth and gang!

[bawjaws]

I always liked The Frighteners.. Scary and funny .Great FX

[Mal Hombre]

Th13rteen Ghosts,it didn't get great reviews but i like it.

[blatt]

Read up that it didnt do very well at the box office but i really enjoyed this ghost film. The ending wasnt that great but everything leading up to that ending was. A lot of that could have been to do with cusack though as he is a class act Jackson as the hotel manager was pretty boring on the other hand . Hes one of those actors that has struck lucky and gets to play himself all the time. Compared to cusacks effort what jackson really does is play with himself . Very lazy actor in my opinion !

[otokonomidori]

"Ju-on - The Grudge" [the original Japanese version of course! ]

The non-linear way the tale is presented makes it weirdly disorientating.

[Nobody1]

Trailer (1981) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfro7WO8YJg

[Zipster1]

The Orphange/El Orphanato

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0464141/

Superb ghost movie - one scene in particular, where you first see the ghosts, gives me the creeps every time I see it. Spanish, with English subtitles, but that in no way detracts from the film.

[Leprechaun]

Poltergeist I and II



I like this films also because of their urban-legendary background. Coincidences can be more spooky than alleged forces from the 'other side' ...

* Dominique Dunne, who played eldest daughter Dana Freeling, was strangled by her possessive boyfriend five months after the release of Poltergeist and died five days later. Just 22 years old, she was the daughter of novelist, Dominick Dunne, and sister of actor Griffin Dunne. Dunne had been rehearsing lines with an actor friend when her boyfriend showed up, picked a fight and then killed her. To drown out the noise of the two yelling outside, the actor turned up the Poltergeist soundtrack.

* During a break from the filming of POLTERGEIST III, Heather "They're Here" O'Rourke, 12, who played Carol Anne Freeling in all three movies, died from an intestinal blockage that ruptured. She had been ill for about two years, but her mother claimed doctors misdiagnosed her condition. The movie resumed filming, with stand-ins for O'Rourke's part.

* O'Rourke was buried in Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, a short distance from Dunne.

* Actor Will Sampson, a Creek Indian and actual shaman, performed an exorcism on the set of POLTERGEIST II to rid it of "alien spirits." A year after POLTERGEIST II was released, Sampson died of complications from a heart-lung transplant.

* A few months after filming wrapped on POLTERGEIST II, actor Julian Beck died after a long battle with stomach cancer.

* JoBeth Williams, who played mother Diane Freeling, claims she returned home from the set each day to find pictures on her wall askew. She would straighten them, only to find them crooked again the next day.

* During a scene when Robbie Freeling (Oliver Robins) was choked by a clown in his room, something went wrong with the prop and Robins was actually being choked. Spielberg praised him for his authenticity until he caught onto the trouble and saved Robins.

* James Khan who wrote the novelisation of the movie claims that one night, as he typed the words "Thunder and lightning ripped the sky," a blast of lightning hit his building and blew the cover off an air conditioning unit with enough force to hit him in the back. (oh please!)

* The house used for exterior shots in POLTERGEIST, located in the L.A. suburb of Simi Valley, was damaged during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.The skeletons used on the set of POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE turned out to be actual human skeletons, which creeped out the cast members.

Source: http://www.escendi.com.au/eyescream/movies/polt.html


The Exorcism Of Emily Rose



Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSy7DldFdUI

This movie will probably get a bit more scary for you when you know the true tragic story it loosely based on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel

There's a very interesting documentary about Anneliese Michel at YouTube:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YI6krugHMk
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwE2rMbfWW4
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0xhDyhNFaw
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfg6jEip58I
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt9GEqt9XU4
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pfjH5qsiwQ

If you just want to to hear the genuine audio footage from the Exorcism, start part 4 of the movie. Not for the faint of heart!

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Leprechaun

Actor Will Sampson, a Creek Indian and actual shaman, performed an exorcism on the set of POLTERGEIST II to rid it of "alien spirits." A year after POLTERGEIST II was released, Sampson died of complications from a heart-lung transplant.

Rather off topic, but here's Will Sampson in action as Chief Ten Bears in The Outlaw Josey Wales. A wonderful cameo performance by Sampson, quietly doing homage to the memory of the real Ten Bears, who was a noted warrior and a man of his word, just as Sampson portrays. Sampson himself was extremely cool. I especially relish his delivery in the laconic opening exchange:

Josey Wales: You'll be Ten Bears?
Ten Bears: I am Ten Bears.

Josey Wales spits out his tobacco. Ten Bears observes but declines to react.

Josey Wales: I'm Josey Wales.
Ten Bears: I have heard. You are the Gray Rider. You would not make peace with the Blue Coats. You may go in peace.

Will Sampson's bone dry humour in the delivery of this line is classic. In three words he conveys that Chief Ten Bears doesn't live in a vacuum and that Josey Wales' gaudy reputation is thoroughly known and discussed among the Comanche Nation. Acting is such a straightforward craft when it's left to men like Will Sampson, who know what they're doing.

[scoundrel]

Here is a great film which is a glaring omission, only one mention on this thread. But not any more.

The story itself is IMHO one of Charles Dickens’ finest works, free of the self-indulgence which so often weighed down those long novels of his, the ones which would stop a bullet from an Armalite rifle. There have been many film and TV adaptations and re-imaginings, for example the very watchable Scrooged, starring Bill Murray, and a charming Christmas special from the series Quantum Leap, which borrowed heavily from the Dickens original. However this British film starring Alistair Sim is the best one. Without this film, I doubt that the Dickens story would still be very widely known.

What makes the film special is the simple but deeply convincing central acting of Alistair Sim, in what for me was the best performance of his career. If you over-emphasise the sheer brutal meanness of Scrooge, his ultimate redemption seems forced, contrived and does not wash. It is also easy to go the other way and over-play Scrooge’s latent humanity, making him seem like a nice guy who is only putting on a front and pretending to be mean: equally unpersuasive. Alistair Sim found the middle course with seemingly effortless skill and carried us all the way along Scrooge’s journey with no false note at any step.

A Christmas Carol is often dismissed as lightweight, no more than a children’s bedtime story, a bit of whimsy, albeit nicely done by a top class author. This is a misconception. Dickens was never trivial and in his source story there is a great deal of satirical social comment, albeit artfully implied and understated. The Cratchit family subplot is hugely significant: these are the little people, symbolic of the downtrodden millions, whose fate hangs in the balance of whether or not men like Scrooge even realise the significance of their own power and responsibility. Tiny Tim’s fate, whether he lives or dies, is poised on Scrooge’s whim, whether or not Scrooge opens his eyes and realises that he must not continue to live as he has been living, only and solely for himself. Scrooge too is a symbolic figure, a capitalist who has not yet grasped that money is power and power comes with a moral responsibility.

The craftsmanship of this film, produced and directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, is impressive for a film made so cheaply. Here, incidentally, is my gripe against the colourised version we get shown by UK Channel 5 every Christmas these days. There are few special effects used in the film, other than a bit of spectral transparency, particularly in Michael Hordern’s splendid cameo role as Scrooge’s only friend, the equally deluded Jacob Marley, who has generously pleaded that Ebenezer Scrooge deserves a last chance to save his soul, even though he, Marley, didn’t get any such break. Of course, Marley has actually redeemed his own failed life by showing true friendship from the grave. The genuinely creepy ghost-effects, especially in the later scenes featuring the creepiest ghost, The Spirit of Christmas Yet to Be, is achieved through very canny use of black and white lighting effects (a film noir technique) and through the palpable dread conveyed by Sim’s body language when this ghost comes to collect him. Colourisation cannot take away from Sims’ marvellous acting, but it robs him of the support of those bleak and sinister shadows.

This is a very under-rated film, a masterpiece of 50s British cinema when the British could still do films which were good enough to live in Hollywood company. Just don’t watch the colourised one if you can possibly watch the black and white one.