The Spirit Is Willing Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.0

The Spirit Is Willing Blu-ray Movie Review

. . .but this movie is weak.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 1, 2012

Sid Caesar was inarguably one of the biggest television stars of the fifties, and some would argue its most profoundly influential star in terms of early broadcast comedy. Caesar’s Your Show of Shows didn’t just catapult its star to cultural phenomenon status, it elevated an amazing number of other talents, both in front of and behind the camera, into often legendary careers. Just a partial list of these ancillary cast and crew members includes names like Imogene Coca, Howard Morris, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. (Future icons Larry Gelbart and Woody Allen worked on later Caesar vehicles, including his Your Show of Shows follow up series, Caesar’s Hour). But like so many other small screen sensations, Caesar found his transition into other areas of performance a somewhat rockier road. Despite having a book by Neil Simon and a charming score by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, and having been based on a fantastically comic novel by Patrick (Auntie Mame) Dennis, Caesar’s Broadway musical debut Little Me barely eked out a season’s run and wasn’t considered much of a triumph for the comedian, despite the fact that he played eight different roles. Caesar’s big screen attempts were similarly pretty spotty, with hits like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Grease counterbalancing flops like, well, The Spirit is Willing. Caesar’s manic style somehow never really translated very well to the big screen, and it’s interesting to note that he’s really rather tamped down in this 1967 William Castle “comedy”, a film based on a much more substantial and serious minded novel, The Visitors by Nathaniel Benchley. (Benchley is the father of Jaws’s author Peter, and Benchley’s own father was iconic humorist Robert.) Benchley had adapted his own comic novel The Off- Islanders into the enormously popular The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming in 1966 (gaining an Oscar nomination in the process), and perhaps the success of that adaptation got Castle interested in The Visitors. Unfortunately, Castle was no Norman Jewison, and Castle’s screenwriter Ben Starr was certainly no Nathaniel Benchley.

Comedy might seem to be a natural transition for William Castle, a producer – director whose ostensible dramatic films were often laugh out loud funny, sometimes even intentionally so. Castle may have exploited various gimmicks, but his films were almost always competently crafted, if often lo-fi in their general ambience. It’s perhaps somewhat surprising, then, that Castle’s outright attempts to mine comedic territory fall so awfully flat, but that is certainly the case with The Spirit is Willing. Despite a game cast full of pros like Caesar, Vera Miles, John McGiver and John Astin, The Spirit is Willing is a film that thinks noise adds up to laughs.

In some ways, the best part of The Spirit is Willing is the pre-credits prologue which sets up the quick and dirty story of the three ghosts who will go on to haunt a cliffside mansion where, decades later, Caesar, Miles and son (played by Barry Gordon) show up. This sequence plays with very little dialogue (the ghosts in fact never speak for the rest of the film), and Castle stages everything like a quasi-silent, with over the top mugging and fun, if silly, visual and sound effects. A sea captain is lured into marrying a dog faced woman simply because she’s the daughter of a wealthy ship magnate who promises the lad his fortune if he will marry the girl. Unfortunately, there’s a very attractive housemaid that comes with the home, and soon the Captain is chasing after her while his jilted bride weeps in her bedchamber. The wife is not one to take things lying down (so to speak), and quickly dispatches her new husband and his lover with a hatchet, but not before the husband returns the favor to her. And thus we have the three ghosts, seemingly eternally wedded to the seaside mansion.

Once Caesar and Miles and son show up after the credit sequence, things get pretty pedestrian pretty quickly. The ghosts are engaged in an eternal feud and run around smashing various items, which inevitably gets the teenaged son blamed for acting out. The Spirit is Willing is really kind of smarmy at times in its depiction of family dysfunction. Caesar and Miles yell at Gordon, Gordon yells at both of them, and hilarity supposedly ensues. (It doesn’t.) Even the natty McGiver, as Miles’ rich Uncle, can’t inject much fun into the proceedings, but perhaps the oddest addition here is John Astin, then just out of The Addams Family, as a psychoanalyst hired to check up on Gordon when (are you ready for this?) it’s suspected he might be gay.

The Spirit is Willing often plays like a not very funny extended pilot for one of those cookie cutter sitcoms from the mid-sixties. (And isn’t it interesting to note that that era gave birth to quite a few sitcoms with mystical elements, like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir?) Adding to the television feel is a really annoying score by Vic Mizzy, who wrote the unforgettable theme for Astin’s The Addams Family. Here he works much the same territory, instead of the ascending bass riff that he immortalized with his Addams score, he uses a descending motif, which he works over and over (and over) until it almost becomes unbearable. Mizzy’s score, like so much about The Spirit is Willing, is an object lesson in how less really can (and should) be more.

The Spirit Is Willing Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Spirit is Willing is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While the elements utilized in this transfer are in acceptable enough condition, The Spirit is Willing can't quite overcome its ubiquitous use of opticals for its many visual effects, something that results in a soft, grainy and sometimes dirty looking image. That said, colors are reasonably robust and well saturated (though somewhat faded) and fine object detail is at least acceptable if never overwhelming. This is nonetheless one of the softer, grimier and less appealing Paramount catalog releases that Olive has licensed for Blu-ray release.

The Spirit Is Willing Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Spirit is Willing's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track is serviceable, especially since the film really doesn't have much to offer other than nonstop dialogue punctuated with the occasional smashing object thrown by one of the ghosts. While the lossless track delivers this all with a certain amount of gusto, the lossless audio actually works to the film's detriment with regard to Mizzy's often unbearable score. Castle may have realized the film wasn't playing especially well and asked Mizzy to inject music into virtually every scene, but by about fifteen minutes into this thing, chances are you may be wishing this were indeed a silent movie.

The Spirit Is Willing Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Following in the footsteps of virtually all the other Paramount catalog titles licensed by Olive Films, The Spirit is Willing features no supplements of any kind.

The Spirit Is Willing Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Spirit is Willing is a comedy searching desperately for laughs. Caesar screams, Gordon mugs, McGiver and Astin overact, and Miles just kind of stands back and watches it all pass with jaw agape. I kept expecting a laugh track to intrude to let us know just when The Spirit is Willing was supposed to be "funny", something that would have only cemented the feeling that this film is basically a television pilot that (thankfully) never sold. There is a certain nostalgia factor at work here which may recommend this film to some, and while this doesn't exactly show Caesar off to his best advantage, it's at least a chance to see the great comic genius. If you really want to see what Caesar is capable of, try to find a copy of 10 From 'Your Show of Shows'.