Stageghost

I liked this film. I have looked high and low for years for horror westerns. Horror westerns are very rare indeed and have only come across a couple in my search. Overall it is a decent film that gets such a high rating from me because of the boldness of creating this film in a market place that doesn't really have a spot for western horror. Watch this if you are looking for a spooky time. If you are looking for production values through the roof don't bother. Acting is good and the cinematography was acceptable. Edward Albert did a great job as the sheriff although at the beginning he maybe over did it just a little but i suspect that was part of the script so they could show the change in attitude towards his prisoner. Chris Atkins did a good job as the aloof would be criminal. But the cake goes to the actor who played Padro. I have not seen him in anything else and he don't have many lines but the way he carried himself was well done.

How this movie got to be labeled "horror" and "thriller" is beyond me. It was funny from the beginning to the end. There were the "ghosts" killing the good guys and the Indians killing every body. The various characters over emoted and it comes to mind the silent era of film making where over acting ones part was common. The Indians only wanted to have the good guys "give it back" never explaining what it was they wanted. The bad guys wanted the gold and the good guys didn't know anything about the gold and otherwise couldn't figure out what any of them wanted. Counting their ammo and deciding they didn't have much, they even so fired wildly and in various directs at nothing. One scene has two of them supposedly firing at the same object, but doing so in different directions. But the good guys did manage to find the Eldorado gold mine of Coronado, ha right, where they made their last stand against the Indians, but this time it was with the bad guys help. All the Indians wanted was a "relic" from some past time, all the bad guys wanted was the gold and all the good guys wanted was to get the hell out of there. Most of them lived, somewhat, ever after. Except for a lot of uncalled for foul language, it was an entertaining and fun movie to watch.

Where to begin? How about, "Let's take an interesting premise and do the worst possible job with it!" This is a shot-on-video (the harsh overexposed shots are a dead giveaway) and transferred to film "horror-western" which might have made an intriguing movie had it not been put together so ineptly. As the movie progresses, you can see the boom & microphone put in some cameo appearances. There are continuity errors with horses (the stagecoach has four horses, then three, then four again-from shot to shot!) The cookery & glassware looks like it was made in the year 2000, not 1870. The action takes place over three days, but the moon appears full every night! There's a scene where the marshal & a bad guy are firing their guns at something, but only one gun has blanks, so it looks like one gun isn't doing anything. The addition of standard run-of-the-mill sound effects increase the cheesiness of the whole production. Not to mention the use of music- Typical twangy western music is used here, but the tempo is upbeat when it should be suspenseful- any attempt at atmosphere is usually ruined. Are you getting the idea how much thought was put into this mess? The whole thing is a clumsy, ham-fisted effort and your money would be better spent elsewhere. (If you like "MST3K", you'll get a kick out of it, but everyone else stay away!)

To the defenders of this movie, all I can say is: "Huh?" This is one of the very few movies I have ever turned off before the end. Pointless, nothing supernatural, laughable "skeleton" outfits on the crooks, bad dialog, you name it. The marshal, or sheriff, or whatever he was, began the movie hating the captured bank robber, then suddenly does a 180 without much motivation. "I hate your guts, you scum. . .nah, I guess you're alright." With few exceptions, the actors could have been replaced with cardboard cutouts. Lots of clichés were thrown in, but not enough to help. Yes, help. One colorful villain thrown in the mix was a lot more like a one-eyed land pirate than a cowboy. But, he either wasn't good enough, or bad enough, to help the movie. I awarded two stars, one for the lovely Dana Barron and one for Christopher Atkins. Both did fine jobs, especially considering what they had to work with. Unless you simply have time to kill, or are curious to see how Audry from the first "Vacation" movie grew up (beautiful!) don't bother with this one.

So I watch a lot of bad movies. I've got a bad movie collection. I'm watching Bloodfist right now! There are bad movies that are fun and bad movies that are just lousy. This is the latter. I've never written a review on IMDb but I felt like I had to in this case. If you read through the other reviews you'll see they were obviously written by people somehow related to the movie. This is one of those movies with a fancy cover that tries to get you to shell out a couple of bucks to rent it. Then what do you get? An hour and a half bore. If you want to watch a bad horror western watch "White Buffalo", it'll make you smile. If you want a fun bad movie watch, Trancers, or Slime City, or Death Race 2000, or Cherry 2000, or Escape 2000 (the one where the prisoners are hunted), or Infra-Man, or Stone Cold, or Robot Jox, or the Green Slime, or Timecop, or Scanner Cop, or Maniac Cop, or Samurai Cop, or Karate Cop, or the other movie that's also named Karate Cop... Actually don't watch the other Karate Cop, it's not so good. If you want to watch good movie watch 2001, or Casablanca, Drive was a good, and a lot people seem to like the Godfather part one and two, but I've never actually seen them. Just don't watch Stageghost. It's not fun and they're the kind of hollow sub-humans who write positive reviews for their own awful movie in hopes that you might rent it. They suck.