Strong and Moving!

Redundant and unnecessary.

Captivating movie !

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Before CGI and when you could do full frontal nudity in a major film. The story is that a mysterious woman is haunting the families of four men who accidently killed her back in the 1930's. It's not jump scare or gross out horror like you would see later when Hollywood just ran out of idea. It's very moody and atmospheric. IT was also interesting to see some older actors getting key roles in this film, such as Fred Astaire and Douglas Fairbanks. Where the movie falls down is Alice Krige, who shows about as much acting range as she did when she played the Borg Queen on Star Trek. Her acting is truly robotic and wooden. Her male co-star isn't much better.

Following the death of his twin brother, a man travels home to be with his father and his childhood friends who belong to a secret club and when a mysterious presence starts to kill them one-by-one he helps the remaining members fight the secret that haunts them.This really could've been a halfway decent film. That is helped along greatly by the fact that the central story on display is pretty creative and it manages to wring a clever idea or two out of the story. The fact that it centers on the elderly is it's smartest idea, as it really doesn't seem like a traditional area to focus on and really features a lot of great work to explore that idea of the past coming back to haunt them. That mainly comes about in some rather enjoyable and impressive stalking scenes here, from the first bridge encounter to the strong series of shock flashes showing the ghost appearing around their houses or around the town to torment them, while the fact that it goes into a series of strong attacks in the final half hour as it starts knocking them off in more urgent fashion comes off rather nicely which is where the film really picks up the energy and wins this one quite nicely. The several ghost effects look really disturbing, especially the head make-up on the final reveal which is undoubtedly the best one for its strong shock as it falls out of the car although many of the other jump-scenes featuring the ghost jumping out at them come off rather nicely. The best part of the film, though, is its nudity which is pretty much constant at the beginning of the film and makes it a really strong attention-getting opening half. They're quite nicely filmed and don't really seem all that exploitative featuring plenty of times with them in bed together or taking a bath which is quite nice. They're the best part about the film as. there are several things in here that really could've made this a special film. Among the biggest problems is that the film is just terminally boring as nothing at all happens until the final half hour, and even then there's not a whole lot there. This is mainly caused by two very long and unnecessary flashbacks that don't provide anything other than the nudity since it features all the groups' interactions with her and telling how they all came together in their past. They pad out the film's running time and cover ground that could've been covered in a much simpler and faster way. The lack of scares present is also a bad sign, and other than the mere thought of this involving a ghost, there's nothing remotely scary in here at all since not only is the majority of the scenes are just them being worried without being clear about what's going on since it has all the elements in play, but they don't come together telling a cohesive scary offering. That hurts the film mostly with the other factors to really lower this film a lot. As well, there's a rather abrupt ending that ends this on a quick note and just seems to end without really explaining anything. These here are the film's problems.Rated R: Full Male and Female Nudity, Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and several sex scenes.

Famous for its geriatric cast of renowned Hollywood stars and story based on a popular novel by Peter Straub, "Ghost Story" didn't quite satisfy me personally as a spooky experience, but it does have attributes I appreciated. The terrific Alice Krige offers plenty (not just her fine body in the buff) in the way of creeps and seductive power as a woman four old timers, members of the wealthy "Chowder Society", once knew as young men (and harbor a horrifying secret involving her that has started to haunt them in nightmares). She "surfaces" in a relationship with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr's son (s), played by Craig Wasson (Body Double; A Nightmare on Elm Street III) as twins (one of whom is frightened by the naked corpse of a woman that sends him falling out of a window of his swank apartment stories to his death). The other son, who had started a teaching position which offered a promising tenure, meets Krige (as a secretary to the principal), and he's never the same. He soon realized just how dangerous she was, even though he found himself smitten with her. Seeing Fred Astaire in a film like this was just compelling to me. He is as sweet- natured and genteel as ever. He does show how a mistake from the past involving him leaves a lasting ache he is unable to alleviate. In the bottom of a local river could be the answer to absolving him (as it would Fairbanks, Melvyn Douglas, and John Houseman), but will any of the Chowder Society (or Wasson's teacher, for that matter) get the chance? Houseman gets to tell a ghost story (always a pleasure to listen to that rich voice; but his work at the beginning of Carpenter's The Fog was superior, in my opinion), Douglas (looking quite tired and weary in old age) remains a tormented mess just wanting to confess their sin, and Fairbanks never gets his chance to fish with Wasson. Wasson has a pretty good, star-making role here, but Krige is really the actor that walks away with this film. She owns the screen every time she is featured.Miguel Fernandes has a bizarre role as an occult obsessive, latching on to Krige's promise of eternal life if he (and his animalistic little brother who is basically a wild animal in kid's clothes) will help her bring her killers to justice. Two flashbacks reveal Krige in different time periods...this does kind of provide two instances where her character is identified as a threat and a victim. The bonding between her and the Chowders when they were young adults does fuel a real sense of tragedy. Krige's nakedness in the same film that Fred Astaire appears is kind of surreal, I felt. Good make-up effects for the slimy, rotted corpse that appears at the end. The cast has the kind of name value this film certainly benefits from. Patricia Neal and Jaqueline Brookes have small parts that don't really demand much except their concern for the men they love. There's a lot of story and not enough ghost for my liking.

Somewhere along the way, you have to at least watch a movie that stars veteran actors like Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. They were all, of course, rather elderly when this was made, but certainly not over the hill and, if lacking a little bit in energy, they all made up for that with screen presence, and brought an overall feeling of credibility to a movie whose story I found to be somewhat lacking. The four, along with John Houseman (who also directed) made up what they called the "Chowder Society." They had been meeting together for half a century, meetings that apparently revolved (for some reason) around the old men telling ghost stories to each other in darkened rooms. Suddenly, into their midst comes a real life ghost story, revolving around a deep, dark and tragic secret that the men had managed to keep to themselves for that half century, but which now was threatening to take their lives as their past comes back to haunt them.Eventually, the story becomes essentially a flashback move as we trace the tragic events that happened fifty years before, revolving around the relationship the four developed with a young woman named Eva (Alice Krige) and with the young woman's death, and its cover-up by the four. Krige was fine in the role of Eva - a seductress who led the boys on. Be warned that she has a number of nude scenes, so if that sort of thing isn't to your liking, then this movie will not be for you. Krige pulled off the necessary mysterious (and perhaps even vaguely creepy) personality of Eva quite well - in the "modern" scenes, she is, after all, playing a ghost! I wondered a bit about the character, though. Why return at exactly that moment? I wasn't especially clear on that. And why "recruit" the ex-psychiatric patient, whose role in Eva's plan wasn't entirely clear to me? I finished this with a number of questions about plot points that didn't seem to make a lot of sense.Personally, I didn't find this to be an especially frightening movie, nor was it something that really held me enthralled. It's certainly not one that I would consider classic horror, or even a classic ghost movie. To me, it's more of a curiosity because of the bringing together of the veteran cast, but the story overall was a disappointment. (3/10)