The Ghosts of Hanley House (1968)

So there are a couple of guys hanging out drinking malts or something when the topic of the local haunted house comes up.  It just so happens that one of them owns it and challenges his skeptical friend to stay the night.  His friend is all like, “there ain’t no such thing as ghosts”, and so they make a bet.  If the guy can spend the night he gets his friend’s sports car.  But if he leaves he has to give up his sports car to his friend.  They find a couple of girls to go with them and another older guy.  So the five of them head out to the house.  The ghosts make the cars not start, create a lot of fog, and put a box in the living room.  If that weren’t enough they take their revenge on one of the party guests who it turns out killed some people.  The survivors then are asked nicely to bury the hidden body parts and everyone is happy.

I’ve seen some mighty bad movies in my day but this one has rocketed to the top of the list.  The movie has the distinct feel of a project that was filmed without a script on the fly.  In some ways that helps the cast because it can be hard to deliver lines, but that also means you need to have some idea where the movie is going.  This thing meanders around with little to no idea what the story is until the last ten minutes where they try and wrap everything up.  Oh and just so everyone is clear I’m not saying the acting is good when I mentioned the lack of a script.  Even the clearly adlibbed dialogue is delivered in a sleep inducing monotone that had me reaching for the no doze. 

The only thing worse than the lack of script and talent in front of the camera is the utter lack of it behind the camera.  Lets start with the music, cues, and the dubbing.  I understand many low budget movies are forced to use canned music from catalogs and can’t afford to be scored.  But you can at least try and match the music to the scene, which wasn’t even attempted here.  Not only is the music not matched to the scene but also it is terrible and to top it all off they keep playing the same crappy song again and again.  The audio assault doesn’t end there.  The musical cues are overused and far too loud and there are many scenes shot without sound and poorly dubbed in later.  The camera work is mediocre, but looks great compared to the awful lighting.  You have night shots clearly executed without a filter or any attempt to hid the fact it was shot in the daylight.  The actual shooting done at night is so poorly light that you can barely see what is going on.  This is ironic because the interiors are light so badly that the actor’s faces disappear under the glare of the light shining off their faces!  You know I have more but I’m done.

This is a terrible movie.  Make my sacrifice mean something and never ever watch The Ghosts of Hanley House.

0 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer