BEFORE: Just like Topper, I've returned. We flew back from New Orleans on Sunday, I took some time to decompress, unpack and watch TV, and I'm back on horror movies, with two days left in the month, and just 15 films left in the year after this one. Halloween is here, but Thanksgiving and Christmas will both be here before you know it, so I've got to get moving again.
But first, our vacation itinerary, because the experiences are still running around in my head and I want to get them out before I forget them. Fortunately, I took a lot of pictures. So here's where we went and what we did, and I promise, this links back to tonight's film theme.
Day 1 - we flew to Dallas/Ft. Worth ON my birthday, which is probably bad luck somehow, but I tried not to think about that. Got our rental car, had a quick lunch (fried catfish for me) and checked into our hotel, then headed out for Dealey Plaza via Uber. Visited the JFK-themed museum on the sixth floor of what used to be the Texas School Book Depository, the location where Lee Harvey Oswald (allegedly) shot at JFK's motorcade. They've preserved a corner as the "sniper's nest", but turned the rest of the floor into a Kennedy assassination-themed museum. Then I just HAD to go see the famous grassy knoll, and stand in the spot where Zapruder stood when he filmed the assassination. This was the ONE thing I didn't get to do in Dallas last year, so it was my first priority this time around. Then we went out for my BBQ birthday meal, at a place called Off the Bone - which was a bit off the beaten path, but top-notch for food. (Best pulled pork of the trip.)
Day 2 - with some difficulty from a confusing highway system that confounded our GPS, we drove to the Texas State Fair. This was the last day of the fair, but the first weekend day with nice weather, apparently it had been raining in Texas for weeks. So nearly everyone in Dallas had the same idea that we had months ago, which was to visit the Fair on the last day of operation - a record crowd came out, and we had to contend with long lines as we waited for our delicious (mostly) deep-fried food from stands. My favorites were the deep-fried spaghetti & meatballs (yep) and a deep-fried cinnamon roll with bacon and powdered sugar. Also ate an order of deep-fried chicken skin, that was the only item that made me feel a little dirty.
Day 3 - stopped at Waffle House, drove down to Austin, and visited the Cathedral of Junk. This is basically a tower of discarded junk items in some guy's backyard, we didn't have an appointment to visit but two $5 bills took care of that situation. After a couple hours exploring the tower, we went for BBQ in a food truck park, only to find that due to all the rain and flooding in that part of Texas, Austin was under a "boil water" notice and many restaurants, including the food trucks, were unable to open. We punted and headed for the nearest sit-down BBQ restaurant, called Terry Black's, and had a great meal (no ice in the drinks, though, just bottled soda). (Best ribs of the trip, I think) We made a stop at the Texas Capitol Building downtown, and were surprised that we could just walk in and conduct our own tour - this was 6 pm, and all government workers had gone home, but the building was still open to the public. So we got to see the rotunda, portraits of Texas governors, and the room where the Texas House of Representatives legislates.
Day 4 - we drove to San Antonio, and visited the Alamo, which is much smaller than you might think. Only the mission church and its grounds remain from the giant 1800's fort, plus they added a gift shop. (Still, no basement...) Learned a bit about Texas history, then we checked into our hotel and went to the famous Riverwalk, a collection of shops and restaurants on the banks of the San Antonio River. Found another BBQ restaurant there, County Line - meh, this was just average BBQ, nothing special. Maybe we should have tried harder.
Day 5 - long drive to Houston, stopped at a Buc-ee's rest stop, where I had a great brisket sandwich, then we visited a Hindu temple in Sugar Land, TX. Reached our hotel in downtown Houston and went out for a nice (non-BBQ) meal at a steakhouse.
Day 6 - took a morning bus tour of Houston, then rode another bus out to Johnson Space Center, where we saw the original Mission Control room from the Apollo missions, a bunch of astronaut training vehicles, and a replica of a space shuttle. Total geek paradise, even though I'm not really as into the astronaut stuff as some nerds are. Went out for late BBQ at a food hall, a stand called El Burro and the Bull, which was a little Tex-Mexy, but still - best brisket of the trip, let's say.
Day 7 - visited the studio of sculptor David Adickes, which was really just a storage yard for his giant busts of U.S. Presidents (all of them through Obama, no Trump yet). If you know the address, you can see many of these giant heads through a chain-link fence, though many are turned facing away from the street. Then we struck out for the LONG drive to New Orleans, arriving in time to visit a riverboat casino and eat at the buffet there. I staked out the slot machine I wanted to play, and hit for $300.
Day 8 - after beignets at a café, we visited the French Quarter, which was a very touristy thing to do, only this was the Saturday before Halloween, so naturally everyone had the SAME idea. The place was packed with costumed revelers, it turns out that this is the 2nd busiest holiday there, after Mardi Gras, of course. We killed some time at the Louisiana State Museum, which had an exhibit on Hurricane Katrina and its effects, then bit the bullet and walked down Bourbon St. A couple of drinks and some lunch later, we tried to visit the Museum of Death, but naturally everyone else wanted to do that before Halloween, too, so we just shopped until our "Spooky Tour" of the city started at 5 pm. This was pretty neat, though our feet were completely worn out at this point, we held up through this walking tour and heard stories about voodoo priestesses, vampires, ghosts and scariest of all, Nicolas Cage. But let's focus on the ghost story angle, because that's right where I find myself for tonight's film.
For linking, I've got to resort to something indirect, especially if I want to stay on the "ghost" theme and end October the way I want to. This is something that's just going to have to happen more and more - looking at my films for next October, a few films link together but outside of that, it's going to be a random collection of beasts and monsters, possibly with very little connective tissue. That's the way it goes - I've had a number of great, fully-linked Octobers but now I'm doing the clean-up work. Linking the version of "Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde" with Spencer Tracy to the 1982 movie "Swamp Thing" is no easy task, so honestly it's easier now to group by subject, like putting all the zombie movies together, or all the Mummy movies. Times change, and my system just will have to change with it.
Still, here are some indirect links from "Topper Returns" - Roland Young was in "Let's Dance" with Fred Astaire (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall") and Billie Burke was in "The Barkleys of Broadway", also with Astaire. So, take your pick.
THE PLOT: Two generations of men find themselves haunted by the presence of a spectral woman. When the son of one of the elderly men returns to his hometown after his brother's mysterious death, they attempt to unravel her story.
AFTER: I picked this film up back when I was putting together the 2nd chain of Fred Astaire films like "Royal Wedding" and "Silk Stockings", and I needed another film to fill up a DVD (back when I still COULD dub films to DVD). Of course, I soon realized my mistake, in that there was no way to watch "Easter Parade" and a horror film next to each other, not if I'm going to follow the calendar. So this has been sort of a leftover, the last remaining Astaire film in the collection, and I'm just going to drop it in here to dispose of it, in the last days of horror season 2018.
Let me deal with the story first, which might have been some manner of scary back in 1981, but I don't think that it's aged well. Not now that we have films like "Crimson Peak" and well, tomorrow's film, with modern special effects - by comparison, "Ghost Story" really looks like it was made on the cheap. There's a couple lame-looking skeletons, and some see-through ghost effects, but nothing's really more complicated than the ghost effects in "Topper", and that was a film made nearly 45 years before.
The problem with "Ghost Story" is that it contains too many, well, ghost stories. These are presented as flashbacks or dreams which may or may not have happened, so how can we tell what's a real part of the narrative and what isn't? The four older characters spend their days telling each other ghost stories trying to scare each other, but meanwhile there's a very REAL story that they all experienced together, one that they defiantly will NOT talk about. So basically they've spent about 50 years not talking about what happened, but the more you try to sweep something under the carpet, the more this event grows in size and importance, and it festers within them, so one day it's all going to come out bigger and more dangerous than before, and destroy them all. Umm, or something. We can't be sure because they WON'T TALK ABOUT IT.
Instead, the story then follows one of their sons - or maybe it's two, it's tough to tell at first because both twin sons are played by the same actor, only a cheesy mustache separates David from Don. David falls from a very tall apartment building in NYC, after a confrontation with a ghost that somehow made his pants disappear after he fell out the window. (That's NITPICK POINT #1...) At least, I think that's what happened, because this could have been Don's dream. Later when Don visits his father and they discuss David's death, he asks "What happened?" which is not usually a question someone asks when their brother falls to his death - because gravity's not really much of a mystery any more. And if the dream is reality, then he already KNOWS what happened, so either way, him asking this question doesn't make any sense. (NITPICK POINT #2)
Don's father dies shortly after this, when he sees a vision of his dead son David during a snowstorm, and he follows it to a bridge over an icy river, where he falls (jumps? gets pushed?? this is also unclear...) into the water. All of this uncertainty was quite maddening, without any answers about what's going on and whether everything is connected, the result is a feeling like this is a collection of random incidents, strung together very loosely, with no cause and effect. But Mr. Wanderley's death creates an opening in the "Chowder Society", so Don applies for membership, and the cost to join is apparently, you guessed it, a ghost story.
The story that Don tells relates to David's story, because in Don's story, he started dating Alma, a secretary at the college in Florida where he was a professor. After a few months of physical extra-curricular activities, they got engaged, and Alma wanted to get married back in his home-town in New England for some reason. One night he touched Alma as she was sleeping, and realized she was very cold, like a corpse. (Somehow it took him a few months to learn this, so I'm calling that NITPICK POINT #3.) Don broke up with Alma, and she then left town and started dating his brother David in New York - then David died, so naturally this leads to questions about who Alma really is, and why she's so interested in this family from New England.
Finally, another ghost story/flashback attempts to explain everything, and it snaps us back to the late 1920's, when the four members of the Chowder Society were young men, four friends who start hanging around with Eva Galli, the new girl in town, who lives in the big mansion. They're all smitten by her, but she chooses the young Edward (Don/David's father, coincidentally). Edward takes her to bed, but is unable to perform - this was way before the invention of Viagra, and I think in those days, E.D. was considered to somehow be the woman's fault. Still, that doesn't stop Edward from bragging about his prowess to his three friends, and they all get drunk and go over to Eva's house. When Eva starts flirting with the other friends, perhaps to make Edward jealous, or perhaps to make him excited, she's branded a "slut", and back then, that was even worse than being called a tease. So things get out of hand, and it doesn't end well.
So we're led to believe that the "ghost" of Eva is behind all the misfortunes that come to these men, and so much is left unclear about how she died, or even whether she died, that again, this story becomes hard to take seriously because of how few things in it can be considered "facts". Also, what exactly is a ghost capable of - can a ghost masquerade as a human, can a ghost have sex with another human, can a ghost get a job as a secretary? How does she type or file, if she's just a non-corporeal spirit? How did get hired, without a valid Social Security number, or a believable resumé? Yep, we're up to NITPICK POINT #4 already. While we're at it, let's hit N.P. #5 - how come a ghost can contact Don and David and pass for human, and she can travel from Florida to New York, but she can't return to New England by herself and find the men that she really wants to get revenge on?
For that matter, why does she wait over 50 years before taking her revenge, assuming that's what's happening here? Did it take her 50 years to build up her ghostly powers, or to devise this sneaky plan to strike at this man through his sons? Does time pass differently for a ghost? So many unanswered questions here... But through all that time that it took her to get her revenge, those men are living well, having wives and children, working as doctors or lawyers or mayors, and how does that help? The ghost also appeared to have two human helpers, who were escaped inmates from an asylum, but this whole part of the story seemed very disconnected from the main part - it was unclear WHY they were helping the ghost, or whether they even knew what they were doing. So random.
Oddly, I found myself thinking about the #meToo movement here, or at least the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, the testimony from women who accused him of sexual assault. This film shows four male friends all interested in the same woman, and Kavanaugh's friends bragged in their yearbook about being "Renata alumni", perhaps claiming that they all had sex with the same girl named Renata. In those hearings, we all heard stories from the past about relationships and parties, and obviously there was a great deal of dispute over what really happened. Perhaps some people were lying under oath, and perhaps some people weren't remembering things clearly, and perhaps others were too drunk at the time to properly remember now what took place. It's maddening that we will never know for sure about this man, and now he's sitting on the highest court in the land. Perhaps this is a man that could use a visit from a vengeful ghost or two in the middle of the night.
This film is just as confounding, because in a similar fashion, when it was all over, I wasn't really sure what had taken place and what hadn't, which sequences were intended to be "real" and which were not. That's a common problem, I think, when too many flashbacks are involved.
Also starring Melvyn Douglas (last seen in "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"), Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman (last seen in "The Cheap Detective"), Craig Wasson, Patricia Neal (last seen in "The Day the Earth Stood Still"), Alice Krige (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Jacqueline Brookes (last seen in "Sea of Love"), Miguel Fernandes, Lance Holcomb, Mark Chamberlin, Tim Choate (last seen in "Jefferson in Paris"), Kurt Johnson, Ken Olin, Brad Sullivan (last seen in "Slap Shot"), Michael O'Neill (last seen in "Dreamcatcher"), Guy Boyd (last seen in "While We're Young"), Robin Curtis.
RATING: 4 out of 10 straw boater hats
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