Resurrection Mary

If it wasn't for my mother (Irmgard,Ritter, not Ingrid) having a small part in this movie as Sophie's aunt, I would have easily passed over this movie. I saw it on its premier night at the Pickwick Theater in Park Ridge, Illinois. The editing was poor with loud music over-powering the actors, couldn't understand what was being said, it was like being at a concert where you hear music and see lips moving but nothing coming out. The movie had lots of dead spots as if the actors were trying to remember their lines. The movie was difficult to follow, bouncing all over the place. I wouldn't waste my time with this movie unless you want to use it for background noise.

Resurrection Mary is a real ghost - as far as any ghost is real. Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night wrote a song about her the year after this film was released, so unfortunately, "I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore" is not included on the soundtrack. All the same, the music wants for nothing, but when you've said that, you've said it all.

Films about the supernatural are often confusing: flashbacks, dream sequences and so on, but this one is ultra-confusing. Our hero encounters Mary at a party, and she wants his fiancée, but when the car crashes, things don't turn out the way they should. This is also one feisty spirit who packs a hell of a punch. There is a resolution, but if you want something less challenging, buy a Rubik cube.

I saw "Resurrection Mary" at The Chicago Horror Film Fest. It was the best feature of the weekend. It reminded me of the kind of show that Alfred Hitchcook use to make. The movie began with a short sparse wedding scene wherein the main characters were introduced. Soon thereafter the story got going and kept me spellbound until the end.

The movie is based on the legend of the ghost that haunts Resurrection Cemetery and Archer Av. in Chicago. As the legend goes, a beautiful young girl,engaged to be married, becomes involved in a dalliance at a dance hall with someone other than her fiancée.When this suitor is done with her, he leaves her in the way that all men leave women who give up their love too easily, ashamed and heartbroken. She is killed on her way home that night by a hit and run driver. By dying before making amends for her transgression, Mary becomes an agent for the devil, reborn with a new purpose. She appears at certain places finding and ferrying souls to the devil, souls who like her's, "have sin still clinging to them."

Decades later Shawn, an emotionally conflicted young man, encounters Mary at the same dance hall where years earlier Mary's lapse in judgement condemned her to a perpetual partnering with the devil. In a torrid public bathroom scene, an engaged Shawn, the male lead in the movie, acting on lustful impulse,instigates a replay of the passionate embrace of years earlier,this time with an ironic twist.It's Shawn who betrays his betrothal and is left to pay Mary the price of this "one night stand". Shawn discovers through Mary that guilt,denial and regret are the wages of sin.

This movie explores issues of sin and it's physical and emotional consequence as well as moral restitution and redemption. It occurred to me that the moral of "Resurrection Mary" is delineated concisely in a 5 word dialogue between the main characters at the end of the movie. They are the 5 words, when uttered by the truly contrite, have the power to absolve the soul of sin and guilt and set a spirit free.

The movie is worth a look whenever it is released.

I watched only some of the film and gave up. Too much annoying flashbacks, and clips of whats going on the characters head. The main character is miserable from the very beginning. I don't know what Mary the strange woman in white saw in him. It seems she's surrounded by maggots and flies. There is an actual legend about a ghost called Resurrection Mary but this film is bad, and an excuse to make a silly soap opera with grumpy faces. I've seen more exciting docudramas than this. None of the characters appear to like each other, and the acting is wooden. I've seen better actors doing pantomimes than this.

While at a wedding reception for another couple, a self-doubting groom-to-be spies a platinum blonde in a white satin dress giving him the eye; intrigued, he follows her into the ladies room, but she vanishes. Later, out on the road with his fiancée, the young man apparently hits the girl with his car, only to learn that she's a ghost--the legendary jilted tramp from years gone by who perished with a doomed soul! What might have passed muster as a short-subject from a student filmmaker is elongated here to an excruciating length, filled with amateur performances, crass dialogue, flashy editing which serves no purpose except to confuse, T&A interludes, and bright red blood. Star Jason Ryan Lovett has the granite jaw and solemn manner of a misunderstood hero from a 1960s B-flick, but he isn't given the proper material to showcase a personality. Low-budget film isn't ghastly, though it shows no imagination, no style. Hopefully for Lovett, better projects are lying in wait. NO STARS from ****