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Certain movies can stick with you after years and years.

I've only seen "The Spirit is Willing" two or three times, probably most often on the CBS Late Night Movies. (That was way back in the Stone Age, when Carson was the only late-night talk show. I was probably in elementary or junior high school and would stay up way too late to watch the movies that started at 10:30 Central time. But enough about that.)

"The Spirit is Willing" was one of those silly, harmless comedies so fondly remembered. It had the hapless dad, the loving mother and the teenage son who was smarter than either, except when it came to the romance department.

What teenage boy wouldn't want to live in a house with a beautiful and sexy blonde ghost?! Oh, and of course, he had a beautiful blond girlfriend who looked just like the ghost!!

This is a movie the way they used to be made! Not hilarious, but definitely funny ... a guilty pleasure. (Now if only it would be re-released!)

Spirit is Willing, The (1967)

1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely bad mixture of horror and laughs about a teenager (Barry Gordon) who moves with his parents (Sid Caesar, Vera Miles) to a New England house, which just happens to be haunted. The parents naturally don't believe their son that three spirits are there so he ends up getting accused of most the damage being done by the ghosts. I think most people came to know the name William Castle through films like THE TINGLER, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL or some of his other gimmick horror movies. Just by watching them you'd think he was a decent director but then you might want to venture out into some of the other genres that he touched and you'll see some pretty bad movies. What's so shocking to me is that Castle was a naturally charming guy that could be very funny during interviews. Just by watching him you'd think he would be a natural for comedy but that certainly wasn't the case because he made some truly bad ones in his career and this here is one of the worst. Just by watching this film you'd think that Castle just thought having two people scream at each other was something funny. The characters in this motion picture just come off so fake, so stupid and so downright idiotic that you can never take them serious nor can you believe any of the situations that they are in. There's an entire subplot dealing with the teenager being "distant" and "going through a bad spell" and most of these scenes have him screaming at the top of his lungs while his father will then scream at the top of his lungs. The son will come back louder. The father will then go louder. Mommy will jump in louder then the son gets louder. This is supposed to be funny? After sitting through this for a second you'll be wishing that all three fell into the acid pit that we saw in Castle's HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Things really aren't much better with the type of humor from the ghosts as the majority of the so-called "laughs" comes from them either throwing dishes, ruining the furniture or just closing doors. It's really shocking at how poorly done everything in this movie was. The direction was really bad, the screenplay horrid and the overall flow of things is just so sloppy and silly that you are almost shocked that a major studio (Paramount) was behind it. You also have to wonder if this film helped play a part in the studio decided to go with someone other than Castle for ROSEMARY'S BABY, which would be released the following year. Either way, Castle has some good movies out there but there's no denying his comedies are truly awful movies and this here might be the worst.

I would love to see this movie again, I saw it once as a kid, and have always wanted to see it again. I wonder how much my perception has changed since then. I fear that I might think it's horrible now, compared to my fond childhood memory of it. Why do I think so highly of this film? I don't even know. That may be a question in itself. All I know is, the film couldn't have been so bad that they wouldn't put it out on video or DVD, hell they've put everything else out. If anybody knows how I can see this film again please notify me. . It was very nice to read the other comments from other people who liked this film as well. Now, suddenly I don't feel so alone in the universe.

-Joe

Ninteenth Century. A lone seaman stands on a cliff. An elderly captain approaches. He points to the house and the seaman looks through his telescope, spying the captain's spinster daughter, Felicity. When we are shown Felicity, grinning broadly through the telescope, we hear a squawking seagull. She has great inner beauty, her father says. The man who marries her would be in charge of my entire fleet, he promises. The seaman looks through the telescope again and when we see Felicity, grinning and waving, the seagull sqawks once more.

Felicity was played by an old comedic actress named Cass Daley, who was Olive Oyl come to life, pure cartoon. Even more the seaman who marries her for her money is none other than Robert Donner, best known for the madman Exedor on Mork and Mindy. On their wedding night, as Felicity frolicks in bed waiting for her man, Donner has gone to the maid's room, just off the kitchen and beside the basement. With no dialogue in this entire prologue, the whole scene is compelled by music.

Finally, Felicity, realizing what has happened, comes downstairs and gets the meat cleaver and enters the maid's room. Amid thunder and lightning outside, we hear the maid and the seaman scream, then Felicity drags the maids body out of the bedroom and into the basement, banging her head on each step. Then the seaman staggers out of the bedroom, the meat cleaver in his back, and grabs another knife and enters the basement. We hear Felicity scream, more thunder and lightning, then the wedding march concludes the scene. But wait, three ghostly apparitions emerge through the basement door, one at a time.

Years later, a little family of Sid Ceasar, Vera Miles and Barry Gordon move in. Gordon is a cynical teen ager who takes the vacant bedroom off the kitchen because "it has it's own john." Then the basement door begins to open on its own.

The opening song is truly one of a kind, as another post points out. The phrase, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, comes from the Bible, the book of Matthew. Gordon is superb as the teen ager, Steve, who the ghosts torment. John McGiver (the assassinated Senator in 'Manchurian Candidate', Lord Beasley on a 'Gilligan's Island' episode) is amusing as always as Uncle George, who keeps getting his ship sunk by the ghosts.

The two flaws are from Jill Townsend, who plays the maid, Jenny, but also for some reason plays two of Jenny's descendants, who seem to know everything that happens. Yes, the town could know the place was haunted, but these sisters would finish Sid Ceasar's and Barry Gordon's sentences. To make matters worse, there was a child, Ricky Cordell, that my brother and I could never figure out why he was there. Was he the director's son? Was he the producer's girlfriend's son? Was he to appeal to a younger audience? When my brother and I recorded this show once, we edited out all the scenes with the sisters and the little boy. Other than that, the movie was a delight. Gordon gets the biggest laughs, none of the ghosts speak (interestingly still, Cass Daley had no lines before or after she "died" nor did the maid, Jenny, ever speak). At times, the music gets as bad as Petticoat Junction or the Monkees serial music. I saw another movie "Perils of Pauline" with Pat Boone and Terry-Thomas that had the same annoying music, but the opening song is still a winner.

Plus appearances by Mary Wickes, Jesse White and John Astin are nice too. Felicity wants a man of her own so then the three ghosts can live in peace. One funny moment is when Felicity is holding Jesse White at the bottom of the lake with an anchor on top of him, waiting for him to drown.

I noticed a lot of people wishing there was a way to purchase a copy of this movie. I found a site online that sells rare and classic movies and stuff like that...and they carry this one. Plus, the DVD is only like $12.

Go to - http://store.thesmallscreen.org/spiswi19dvd.html.

Plug that URL into your browser and see for yourself.

I saw the movie when I was really really little and had just written it off as my imagination until I found it here. It combines two things little kids are understandably intrigued by: ghosts and sex. It's comforting to know that I was not simply too imaginative as a child, that the things I swear I remember weren't just fantasies! IMDb validated me just a little.

I wish I was alive in the sixties. Because according to these people, the greatest problem of THEIR time was "the sex lives of ghosts," not crime and poverty. Nice.