The Ghost Walks

Your average story of people being stranded in the road on a dark and stormy night and they seek nearby shelter with a stranger who happens to have a very large mansion. Then strange and spooky things happen. I actually enjoy this clichéd scenario with horror films.

This one is cute. It's sometimes funny, sometimes interesting, sometimes with neat imagery. The story of course is nothing special but it's a fun movie to watch. Although it's not a film to seek out but it is one that is pretty good to watch from a film pack or a free copy to view online if you happen upon the film and like older cute "dark and stormy night" films.

I would describe this film as a comedy-mystery horror - and if you like that kind of movie then you might like this one.

6/10

This is a surprisingly entertaining comic mystery, given that it is mostly low-budget and has a low-profile cast. "The Ghost Walks" is an old-fashioned gloomy house mystery story. Although a lot of the plot elements are old standbys of the genre, there are some nice twists, and the low-key humor usually works fairly well, too.

The film begins with a playwright, a theatrical producer, and the producer's assistant getting stranded in the country and seeking refuge in a large, gloomy old house. The playwright happens to know the occupants, and it turns out that the house had been the scene of a still-unsolved murder some years previously. At dinner, the producer and his assistant listen uncomfortably as everyone else discusses the old murder. Suddenly the lights go out, and then - then comes a pretty nice twist, which most viewers should find surprising and satisfying. It sets the stage for the rest of the action, and is quickly followed by some other twists.

The story that follows is routine in parts, but it is entertaining and has just enough unpredictability to keep the viewer's attention until the end. There is a lot of light humor, most of which is handled pretty well by the cast.

If you like old-fashioned mystery stories that do not take themselves too seriously, you will probably find "The Ghost Walks" worth watching.

A stageplay producer and his assistant are invited to an old house during a rainstorm with unexpected results.

The movie's played more for laughs than for shivers. Erskine (Arthur) and Wood (Carle) are played very broadly, and in Erskine's case with a fey undercurrent. In fact the rather clever screenplay appears to be having a good time with innuendo. There are two good twists to the story, but I kept waiting for the ghost who never seemed to arrive. In fact, the little programmer is more a light-hearted mystery than anything scary. And who is Eve Sothern (Beatrice). I've never seen her before, but with her gorgeously angular features, she furnishes the movie's one riveting moment when she first appears, zombie-like. Anyway, this could have been a good little mystery-fright film had those in charge decided to drop the awkward comedic overlay.

After their car crashes into a tree, theatrical producer Herman Wood (Richard Carle), his secretary Homer Erskine (Johnny Arthur) and playwright Prescott Ames (John Miljan) seek refuge from a storm in a nearby house, the home of Dr. Kent (Henry Kolker). The evening takes an unexpected turn when one of occupants of the house, a strange woman called Beatrice (Eve Southern), disappears during a power outage at dinner and later turns up dead.

This old dark house murder mystery has all of the clichés covered, with a stormy night, secret passageways, a revolving bookcase, a booby trapped four poster bed, a painting with eyeholes, and an escaped homicidal maniac. It also features a neat twist in which most of the characters turn out to be actors performing Ames' new thriller in order to impress the producer. The murder, however, was not part of the plan. When Wood discovers Ames' script and realises that he has been duped, he refuses to believe that the murder is real, especially when Beatrice's body conveniently disappears.

This should have been a whole lot of macabre fun -- the premise is a good one -- but the film suffers from pedestrian direction from Frank R. Strayer, an overly talky script, and too much humour that detracts from the horror. When all is said and done, there has been no murder after all, and the escaped lunatic is easily apprehended and taken back to the asylum.

With its twist, the film reminds me a little of Pete Walker's House of the Long Shadows (1983), but that one had four icons of horror in it. The Ghost Walks doesn't.

I have this movie on a collection of inexpensive B-movies. It's not restored, in fact, the audio was difficult to discern for the first few minutes.

At first, it seemed like a typical haunted house film, and feels very much like the forerunner of Clue, Murder by Death, House on Haunted Hill, etc.

About a half hour into the film, the storyline takes a really interesting twist--and it goes from being a cliché melodrama to something entirely different, and far more entertaining than I had initially thought.

Check it out, it's a great deal of fun, even if the long clips and wider shots (and near lack of music score) make it feel a bit creaky by today's standards.