Ghost Story

Insomniacs apart, the only viewers likely to be attracted to this curiosity are fans of Marianne Faithfull. If they hope to find a forgotten gem of her career, this will disappoint them. A weak story about the haunting of an English mansion is compromised from the start because the location, which was in India, looks nothing like an English mansion. A feeble script and direction leave even such reliable hands as Penelope Keith and Anthony Bate uncertain of how to play. Followers of Marianne Faithfull will find her in ill fitting costumes and photographed from unflattering angles. The overall effect is amateur.

With a title as vague and dull as "Ghost Story", your film must be pretty darn amazing and suspenseful to be memorable! Alas, this 1974 TV-production is weak altogether, and I guess that's why nobody has ever heard of it. The story, setting and atmosphere certainly hold a lot of potential, but the film is too talkative and slow-paced, with unlikable characters and too many plot-aspects that don't make any sense. Three former college mates gather at an old gothic and remote mansion that one of them inherited, supposedly for a reunion, but they clearly never were close friends. That already causes for a big dent in the plausibility. Through sleeping in a room with an eerie porcelain doll, Talbot - the nerdy one of the bunch - gets a spiritual connection with Sophy Kwykwer; a woman who used to live in the mansion. Sophy was emotionally tormented and eventually submitted to a mental asylum by her no-good husband. A handful of sequences, some involving the doll and some taking place at the uncanny asylum, are noteworthy, but "Ghost Story" isn't worth purchasing. The two most famous names in the cast, namely Marianne Faithfull and Barbara Shelley, hardly have any screen time. Before this film, I only knew Faithfull from her fantastic song "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan". The story and dramatic tone of this four-minute chant is already a lot more intense and impactful than this entire movie.

A singularly disjointed and eccentric Murray Melvin vehicle pulling in tropes, inspirations, and homages from left and right, delightful until the last second of the closing credits. Production and costume design are something else entirely-so many questions that yield no answer. I suppose people come in for Marianne Faithful but the film is so blatantly uninterested and unaware of women the leading lady looks more like an afterthought. I wonder if this is a TV movie or people actually went out to watch it in theatre at the time of its release, as the aesthetics, the campiness, and the narrative structure are more reminiscent of TV productions yet it is not marked as one. Very seventies and yet timeless.

Three college acquaintances spend time in an old Victorian mansion. One of them starts seeing visions of events from the previous century, involving a young woman who previously lived in the house. These hallucinations seem to involve an incident where her brother committed her to an insane asylum despite nothing actually being wrong with her.

Ghost Story has a reasonably interesting cast at its disposal. It includes the ultra-camp Murray Melvin (The Devils, Barry Lyndon) as the effeminate host who invites the others to the mansion; friend of The Rolling Stones Marianne Faithful also stars in the role of the ghostly girl, while To the Manor Born's Penelope Keith also appears. But unfortunately, even with this cast there is terrible chemistry between the actors. Meaning its difficult becoming very involved in their story and it is a weak story at that. The narrative is split into two threads – the current day and the ghostly flashback – but the period story is far superior to the anaemic contemporary one. This means that when events return to the three foppish central characters the film really drags. There are admittedly some decent sequences in the ghostly section such as the scene in the asylum. But overall, there really isn't enough good material here to make this obscurity worth checking out.

Behind this film's uninspired title lies a really uninspired storyline: in the early 1930s, three university acquaintances convene at an old country house for a few days of hunting but one of the men discovers that the building in which they are staying is haunted. Now this well-worn plot might not have been so bad had director Stephen Weeks cranked up the tension and gone all out with the scares, but his film delivers tepid chills and zero suspense and is unlikely to unsettle all but the most lily-livered of viewers.

It doesn't help that the three central characters are such an unlikeable bunch: there's effeminate fop McFayden (Murray Melvin) who lies about the true reason for the reunion; Duller (Vivian MacKerrell), who is rude and arrogant; and wimpy Talbot (Larry Dann), who is afraid to tell the others about what he is seeing and hearing in the old house. In a series of 'visions', Talbot sees glimpses of the past, when a previous occupant of the house, Robert (Leigh Lawson), committed his own sister Sophy (Marianne Faithfull) to a nearby loony bin -- because he had incestuous feelings for her. Sophie gets her chance for revenge when the lunatics break out of the asylum and she is able to pay Robert a visit...

Ghost Story is so trite that it even resorts to that hoary old horror cliche, the creepy doll, which appears to be possessed by Sophy's spirit and ultimately kills Talbot and McFayden. Why? I haven't the foggiest, but I didn't really care -- I was just happy that the film was finally over.