6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.9 |
Four successful elderly gentlemen share a gruesome, 50-year old secret.
Starring: Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman, Craig WassonHorror | 100% |
Supernatural | 13% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Do you believe in ghosts? If you do, would you then willingly join a group whose sole reason for existence is to sit around telling scary ghost stories? That’s one small but perhaps salient bit of illogic in Ghost Story, a film which never really caught on during its original release back in 1981, but which has since attained a certain cult status, not only due to its spooky and at times rather hallucinatory demeanor, but also due to the fact that it offered late career roles to a number of one time A-listers, including Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas (who died shortly before the film’s release), John Houseman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. The film was culled from a bestselling novel by Peter Straub, but as one of the really interesting featurettes included on this new Blu-ray mentions, huge swaths of Straub’s book were jettisoned in a fitful attempt to winnow the story down to something that would not take hours and hours of viewing time. As is also mentioned in this featurette, the book probably would have made a better miniseries, at least if adapters had tried to include more of Straub’s kaleidoscopic interweavings of various characters and frightening episodes taking place in the supposedly quaint village of Milburn, New York. Instead screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen approached Straub’s overstuffed tale with an idea that there were certain “non negotiable” story elements which needed to be included. That redacting process meant that Straub’s original book, which really might have been more accurately entitled Ghost Stories, became more centrally focused on four elders in Milburn who do indeed meet to share ghost stories in an aggregation they perhaps whimsically have called The Chowder Society. Unfortunately for all four men, telling stories about ghosts is not their only interaction with spectral beings, and as is detailed fairly early in the film, all four are being haunted at least in their dream states.
Ghost Story is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Elements are in generally very good to excellent condition, though eagle eyed viewers will be able to spot occasional minor anomalies in the form of dirt and scratches and the like (look just below Krige's left cheekbone in the second screenshot accompanying this review for a typical example). The palette has weathered the intervening decades rather well, and while a lot of the film is intentionally autumnal (or even downright wintry), things like fleshtones look natural and some of the more gruesome hues of things like rotting corpses still pop with quite a bit of immediacy. Detail is very good to excellent in close-ups, though some midrange shots are softer looking. Some of the dimly lit scenes, like the red infused room where the Chowder Society tells its first ghost story, offer decent shadow detail if overall lesser degrees of fine detail. The film has a number of optical effects, and those bring with them the customary uptick in grain, softness and dirt. Grain looks nicely organic and encounters no resolution problems throughout the presentation.
Ghost Story features a fine sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track. Dialogue and effects are rendered cleanly and clearly, and the wonderfully atmospheric score by Philippe Sarde sounds excellent, if just a trifle bright at times. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range fairly wide, especially when considering some of the more hyperbolic moments.
A superb cast helps Ghost Story navigate a plot that has perhaps been too severely condensed from Straub's original to gain substantial traction. The film is still rather moody and has a couple of good scares, though this is less of a traditional horror film and more of a psychological character study. Technical merits are generally excellent and Scream Factory has once again assembled a sterling collection of supplements. Highly recommended.
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