The Ghost Walks is another film from the 50 Tales of Terror budget set where a group of people are trapped in an old house during a storm, only to find that there is a murderer in their midst. I swear I've seen at least three other similarly-plotted films from this set recently - "people trapped during a storm and then murdered" must have been the 30's equivalent of our superhero movies, I guess. There are a couple of interesting little quirks here and there in The Ghost Walks, but overall it feels very been there, done that.
The film centers on a famous play producer and his goofy assistant. They are being driven out in the woods by the (awesomely named) playwright Prescott Ames - the idea being that he is looking for a nice secluded place to read the producer his new play. But then a storm hits and their car gets stuck. The trio is forced to take refuge in a nearby house, whose residents are familiar with Ames - we don't know how or why, but something fishy is going on.
And actually, what's going on is it's all a setup. The horror-ish story that unfolds (some jibber-jabber about a three year old murder and a psychic woman) turns out to be Ames' play - they are just acting it out instead of reading it, giving the producer and his secretary a big scare in the process! But eventually, the producer gets wind of the scheme, and that's when the shit hits the fan. You see, then a *real* murder takes place after a crazy guy escapes from the local sanitarium. But despite everyone admitting that the first part was a ruse, they can not convince Mr. Big Shot producer and his asshat secretary that they are all in *real* danger! D'oh!
So I didn't really care all that much for The Ghost Walks. It's certainly inoffensive enough, but there just wasn't enough going on the really capture my interest. Sure, you get the occasional old-timey charming moments - eyes peering out from behind a painting, a woman fainting at the site of a bookshelf moving (a secret passageway) - but those are few and far between. The central mystery isn't all that engaging, and it's a little hard to take it seriously when two of our main characters are basically laughing the whole thing off. Plus, the stakes never feel that high. Most of these films at least have people getting picked off one by one, but here, after the first murder nothing really happens until the very end.
Horror-wise it's underwhelming. Although to be fair, so are most films from the 30s to these modern eyes. There isn't much tension to the proceedings, and the direction is more like a stage-play than a film. And again, like some other films of the era, some of the delivery just sticks out in a bad way. A few actors just yell their lines instead of speaking them naturally - I assume we're still getting used to the "talkies" here? The whodunit angle, once it's resolved, is actually kind of decent - so there's that. Plus, there's this one scene where the lights go out and we see this face:
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| kind of scary! |
It makes no sense, and once everything is revealed... it still doesn't make sense. It looks cool though!
But a couple of fun little quirks don't save The Ghost Walks. It's not a total drag, but there just isn't enough horror, or comedy, or much of anything to get excited about here.
I would not recommend this film.
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