I first encountered GHOST STORY on VHS in the late 1980s where it had been retitled in America as MADHOUSE MANSION to avoid confusion with the better known 1981 Fred Astaire GHOST STORY. Although the print wasn't great, I was immediately attracted to the story of three 1920s British school chums who get together for a weekend of hunting at a Victorian estate recently inherited by one of them. Shortly after their arrival, strange visions are seen by only one of the three. They involve the former inhabitants of the house and are linked to a porcelain doll that was left behind.
The three men are an interesting mix. The owner is a rich fop while another is a class conscious snob who is secretly there to ghost hunt having been told the place is haunted. The third is a fish out of water. He's a mild mannered, overly talkative, rather pathetic soul who is looked down upon by the other two. It is to him rather than the ghost seeker that the visions appear. They depict a brother and sister who lived there before. The brother has the sister committed to a local insane asylum in order to prevent him from acting on his "feelings" for her.
In the film's creepiest sequence, the doll comes to life and leads the protagonist to the asylum where he sees the horrendous conditions that the inmates live under. This includes the sister who is told "No, you're not mad but you'd better behave or else". Before that "else" happens the sister escapes, the inmates break out and subject the doctor to his own treatments. The extras portraying the inmates are truly frightening and the scene depicting the doctor's fate is unnerving. Returning home, the sister then takes her revenge on her brother.
The cast is a curious one. Ken Russell regular Murray Melvin plays MacFayden, the owner of the estate. Cult actor Vivian MacKerrall (WITHNAIL & I) is the ghost seeker/hunter while the plum role of the schoolmate who is visited by the ghosts went to stage and TV actor Larry Dann. Singer Marianne Faithfull, still recovering from her longtime drug addiction but cast for her marquee value, is the unfortunate sister while Leigh Lawson plays her tormented brother. Hammer horror regular Barbara Shelley portrays the asylum matron and Anthony Bate is the asylum director.
Writer-director Stephen Weeks, who had earlier done I, MONSTER with Christopher Lee and GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, shot the film in India on a Maharajah's estate that was built during the Victorian era. While this shaved production costs, it created a host of other problems with poor sanitary conditions impacting the health of the cast and crew. Once completed, the film was barely released and had to wait for the advent of home video in order to be discovered and appreciated. Several bonus features on this release chronicle the ups and downs of the production.
GHOST STORY is likely to appeal only to fans of the British ghost story tradition. The script is on the literary side, the performances are mannered, its action is limited, and the lighting is very dark. However, if you enjoy this sort of thing, then it has rarely been done better than this. The entire movie has a dreamlike effect that manages to stick with you provided you stick with it. Stephen Weeks would leave movies a few years later to restore aging castles and to become a novelist concentrating on stories set in or around Prague where he has been living since the turn of the century.
The Blu-Ray release is an all region affair and comes with a plethora of extras. These include a 72 minute documentary on the making of GHOST STORY, 7 early short films by Stephen Weeks, and the surviving 30 minutes of footage from THE BENGAL LANCERS. This was intended to be a major motion picture with Michael York, Trevor Howard, and Christopher Lee but after 10 days it was shut down because its financing collapsed due to an elaborate insurance fraud scheme of which the filmmakers were unaware. Too bad because the extant footage shows what would have been an epic tale of 19th century British Empire India...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.
The three men are an interesting mix. The owner is a rich fop while another is a class conscious snob who is secretly there to ghost hunt having been told the place is haunted. The third is a fish out of water. He's a mild mannered, overly talkative, rather pathetic soul who is looked down upon by the other two. It is to him rather than the ghost seeker that the visions appear. They depict a brother and sister who lived there before. The brother has the sister committed to a local insane asylum in order to prevent him from acting on his "feelings" for her.
In the film's creepiest sequence, the doll comes to life and leads the protagonist to the asylum where he sees the horrendous conditions that the inmates live under. This includes the sister who is told "No, you're not mad but you'd better behave or else". Before that "else" happens the sister escapes, the inmates break out and subject the doctor to his own treatments. The extras portraying the inmates are truly frightening and the scene depicting the doctor's fate is unnerving. Returning home, the sister then takes her revenge on her brother.
The cast is a curious one. Ken Russell regular Murray Melvin plays MacFayden, the owner of the estate. Cult actor Vivian MacKerrall (WITHNAIL & I) is the ghost seeker/hunter while the plum role of the schoolmate who is visited by the ghosts went to stage and TV actor Larry Dann. Singer Marianne Faithfull, still recovering from her longtime drug addiction but cast for her marquee value, is the unfortunate sister while Leigh Lawson plays her tormented brother. Hammer horror regular Barbara Shelley portrays the asylum matron and Anthony Bate is the asylum director.
Writer-director Stephen Weeks, who had earlier done I, MONSTER with Christopher Lee and GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, shot the film in India on a Maharajah's estate that was built during the Victorian era. While this shaved production costs, it created a host of other problems with poor sanitary conditions impacting the health of the cast and crew. Once completed, the film was barely released and had to wait for the advent of home video in order to be discovered and appreciated. Several bonus features on this release chronicle the ups and downs of the production.
GHOST STORY is likely to appeal only to fans of the British ghost story tradition. The script is on the literary side, the performances are mannered, its action is limited, and the lighting is very dark. However, if you enjoy this sort of thing, then it has rarely been done better than this. The entire movie has a dreamlike effect that manages to stick with you provided you stick with it. Stephen Weeks would leave movies a few years later to restore aging castles and to become a novelist concentrating on stories set in or around Prague where he has been living since the turn of the century.
The Blu-Ray release is an all region affair and comes with a plethora of extras. These include a 72 minute documentary on the making of GHOST STORY, 7 early short films by Stephen Weeks, and the surviving 30 minutes of footage from THE BENGAL LANCERS. This was intended to be a major motion picture with Michael York, Trevor Howard, and Christopher Lee but after 10 days it was shut down because its financing collapsed due to an elaborate insurance fraud scheme of which the filmmakers were unaware. Too bad because the extant footage shows what would have been an epic tale of 19th century British Empire India...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.