Well since everybody is all excited for Back to the Future day, I will give you a fil starring Michael J Fox and directed by Peter Jack of Lord of the Rings fame. Robert Zemeckis is also involved. Sweet. This is a horror-comedy by the way. Ohhhh, Jeffrey Combs is in this, as is Dee Wallace, Jake Busey, and R. Lee Ermey.
We have a young lady running away screaming for something to not hurt her and there’s an old lady. Shit, there are beings comings from the wall trying to grab her. She is cut. She runs upstairs. She runs upstairs where the old lady has a shotgun and says the wicked will be punished, and she shoots the entity holding onto the girl.
So a lot of people are having heart attacks apparently, per Magda Rees-Jones. Frank Bannister (Fox) is at a funeral, giving out his business card, as he’s a psychic. Danny Elfman did the music, so you should know what to expect, and that’s not a bad thing. So Frank leaves the funeral, goes down this ridiculously winding road, ends up driving onto a guy’s lawn who is a ninny and obsessed with his lawn and garden gnomes, so Frank backs over one when he leaves. Dr. Lynskey comes to the home that he saw in the beginning, and Mrs. Bradley comes out saying that it’s private property. Dr. Lynskey is there to treat the daughter, Patricia for the cut. Apparently, Patricia never leaves the house. Old lady is fucking pissed and demanding. Dr. Lyn sees a bad red mark on her neck. Old Lady makes Lynskey leave and says that she could have Patricia locked up anytime, and says that it was all plotted murder.
We see flashbacks of John Bartlett’s massacre where he killed 12 people back in the black and white days. He was an orderly I think. He shot all of those people, including people in the chapel. He killed 11 people in Nebraska. Patricia was also implicated in the murders, and she was in love with Johnny. Dr. Lyn is watching this video on Johnny. Patricia was sentenced to life in prison. She was granted a conditioned release by the governor 5 years later. Lyn’s husband Ray is a tad annoying and overbearing, but in a silly way. He’s also the guy with the lawn. The bed and other shit start floating in the air. A doll is up and walking, and here comes a frozen/thawed turkey walking at them. Ray doesn’t want Frank to come because….he’s a nitwit. Lyn calls Frank anyway.
Frank shows up in typical fashion. Frank wants $250 and some charges, so that’s more like $450, but they can forget the fence and call it even. Ray is pissed off at this whole situation. So he captures 6 spirits with a holy water squirt gun, and it’s all incredibly cheesy. So he is about to wrap up and sees the number 37 on Ray’s forehead. Ray says that he is just trying to get more money out of them. Ray gives him the boot.
A spirit exits Frank’s trunk and goes to puke, hey and a second one who is a black dude. Frank is mad that these guys didn’t do any scary things, they are his assistants to him. This black ghost is tremendous. They don’t know about the number on Ray’s head. Stuart is the white ghost is all mild-mannered, and the black one, Cyrus, is very….boisterous. Oh man, they even have a ghost dog. Cyrus wants some cigars. Good for him. Some old ghost just started shooting. This is weird as hell. I think the old one is named Judge, and he needs more ectoplasm apparently. I enjoyed Cyrus and Stuart scaring Frank.
Frank has a notice from the bank, he needs $15,000 or else he will lose his house. So time to haunt a place. They go to a big fancy house, and they tell the baby that they are gonna scare the adults. The kids are floating and happy. Frank gets the call. Judge warns him about the town being plagued with death. Frank’s driving is fabulous. Frank shows up and then the lady sees a newspaper article about how he’s a con man.
Frank walks down the street, and Ray is a spirit running towards him. Ray is wondering what happened. It sounds like a heart attack. Ray wants to go to his funeral, and Ray is all scared of the spirits. Hahaha, one of the spirits is R Lee. Holy shit, he is so hilarious. Ray is a moron for a ghost, as one would suspect. The guy who plays Sheriff Walt, he’s a great actor. I like him too. Lyn asks Frank if Ray has any words for her, and we find out her name is Lucy. Sweet.
Frank meets up with Lucy for dinner. They are some medieval-themed restaurant. She asks why he can see Ray and she can’t. He explains that he had a car accident, and after near-death experiences are more prone to see spirits. She says that they didn’t have a good marriage. Frank goes to the bathroom and a dude comes in and he sees the number 38 on his forehead. That’s cool, and Frank’s behavior creeps out the gentleman. Well, the Grim Reaper comes from the mirror and kills the guy via heart attack.
The sheriff wants Frank brought in since he was last seen with the dead guy. The grim reaper keeps coming at Frank. Lucy is being questioned by Sheriff Walt. In comes FBI Agent Milton Dammer (Jeffrey Combs). He has a weird way about him. Milton is a whack job. Milton has 20 years experience with paranormal shit. Milton tells a story about Frank with his wife back in the day. Frank and Debra are arguing, and that’s when the accident that occurred. Milton says that Frank’s utility knife was never found and the number 13 was carved in her forehead.
Another guy dies, and Frank sees it. She goes, and the pissed-off rich lady, Magda, has 40 on her forehead, so we know that she’s next. The cops stop Frank, and the grim reapers show up to get her, and the judge comes in firing at Grim. All the spirits are fucking with the sheriffs to buy Frank time. Grim kills Judge, it that is possible. Frank escapes with #40 lady. The sheriffs go to give chase, but Stuart and Cyrus stall them. Frank is driving like crazy with death fucking with him. Death gets Magda after the car crash.
Milton tells Walt that it will be incredibly hard to find Frank. Then Frank just walks in. Lucy tries to stick up for him, and Frank is a dick to Lucy to get her to stop sticking up for him. I am going to watch this for a bit. There’s a lot of plot going on.
An hour later, and it finished. It went all over the place. Dammers was pretty evil and he had issues, Patricia really did help Johnny and she was pretty fucked up, and Frank died, but then didn’t die. Yeah. In the end, Frank and Lucy are together.
End film.
Wow, so that’s why I haven’t watched it since it came out almost 20 years ago. That was long, and it was unnecessarily long. That’s my issue. I said how much I loved how The Fly didn’t waste time with useless stuff. It was precise, it got in and out. This, on the other hand, was clearly Peter Jackson doing what he does best, drag everything on and on and on. I don’t blame the actors. Fox was awesome. Dammers was a useless part. Just eliminate his role and cut this film 30-40 minutes. The plot was there, but they could have arrived there so much faster. By the end, I just zoned out. I’m not tired, I was excited, but I zoned out. This film failed to hold my interest much after 45 minutes. I blame Peter Jackson, but I also need to thank him as the visuals were top-notch. I will say that they delivered, but the substance wasn’t there. This bummed me out. Oh, and the kick in the teeth was not even using a good version of Don’t Fear The Reaper during the credits. Another gripe I had was, I didn’t see the need to have it rated R, PG-13 may have suited this better. It wasn’t a gore fest, and you can use different language, cut down on the fucks. They were in limbo, to nice and cheesy to be R, but too many swears for PG 13 I guess.
Final rating: 3.0
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