Ghost Story
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Ghost Story

Year:
Duration:
110 min
Genres:
Drama | Horror | Thriller
IMDB rate:
6.2
Director:
John Irvin
Awards:
1 nomination
Details
Country: USA
Release Date: 1981-12-18
Filming Locations: Albany, New York, USA
Earnings
Opening Weekend: $2,105,729 (USA) (20 December 1981)
Gross: $16,202,210 (USA) (17 January 1982)
Cast
Actor
Character
Fred Astaire
Ricky Hawthorne
Melvyn Douglas
Dr. John Jaffrey
Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Edward Charles Wanderley
John Houseman
Sears James
Craig Wasson
Don Wanderley / David Wanderley
Patricia Neal
Stella Hawthorne
Jacqueline Brookes
Milly
Miguel Fernandes
Gregory Bate
Lance Holcomb
Fenny Bate
Mark Chamberlin
Young Jaffrey
Tim Choate
Young Hawthorne
Kurt Johnson
Young Wanderley
Ken Olin
Young James
Brad Sullivan
Sheriff Hardesty
Guy Boyd
Omar Norris
Michael O'Neill
Churchill
Robert Burr
Peterson - the principal of Orlando College
Helena Carroll
Mrs. Meredith - Peterson's secretary
Robin Curtis
Rea Dedham
Breon Gorman
Nettie Dedham
James Greene
The Postman
Cagle D. Green
Eva's Ghost
Kyra Carleton
Eva's Ghost
Ruth Hunt
Florence - Sears and and Ricky's secretary
Deborah Offner
Helen Kayon
Virginia Bingham
Sears' Mother (as Virginia P. Bingham)
William E. Conway
Sears' Father
Russell R. Bletzer
Reverend Wilkinson
Terrance Mario Carnes
The Waiter
Alfred Curven
Man in the Coffin
Edward F. Dillon
The Judge
Alvin W. Fretz
The Coroner
Hugh Hires
Student Solt
Raymond J. Quinn
Ricky's Father
Barbara von Zastrow
Ricky's Mother
Betty Low
Irmengard
Mason Cardiff
Schoolboy (uncredited)
Gale Grindle
Student (uncredited)
Did you know?
Trivia
The movie starred two Douglases - Melvyn Douglas and 'Douglas Fairbanks Jnr'.
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Publicity for this pictured declared that the film was in the tradition of Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe.
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Second of two ghost story horror pictures that veteran actor Melvyn Douglas made in a two year period right at the end of his movie career. The first film was The Changeling (1980).
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Goofs
David's crashing against the window was filmed with Craig Wasson on a blue screen and a background where a cross iron bar is swung against the window on wires to break it in the same manner that a man which outstretched arms would. Craig's body was meant to block the cross iron but it does indeed become briefly visible under the right arm and side at the end of the shot.
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Just before Fenny moves toward Ricky in Eva's old house, Fenny's strap is down. In the next shot, it is up.
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With David's naked plunge through the window, not only does the towel disappear but in the distant long shot of him falling from the building, there is no broken window.
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Quotes
Don: You're dead!
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Eva: Dance with me, you little toad.
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Eva: I will take you places you've never been. I will show you things that you have never seen and I will see the life run out of you.
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Faq
Q
Is this based on a book?
A
Ghost Story is somewhat loosely based upon the 1979 Peter Straub novel of the same name.
Q
Why does Alma tell David 'I am you?'
A
This line occurs a number of times in the novel, and is left maddeningly vague. It seems to share meaning with another quote from the book, wherein a sleepwalking Alma says to Don what he initially takes to be "I saw a ghost" but eventually concludes was actually 'You are a ghost," which he considers to be 'the unhappy perception at the heart of every ghost story.' (This scene also occurs within the film, but without that line of dialogue, when Don and Alma are vacationing at a beach house.) The implication could be that humans are transient beings doomed to eventually share the fate of the ghost, or that ghosts and those they haunt are reflections of one another. Beyond that, the author imparts no specific meaning to either statement.In Danse Macabre, horror writer Stephen King (who collaborated with Ghost Story author Peter Straub on The Talisman) suggested, "What is the ghost, after all, that it should frighten us so, but our own face?"
Q
What's with the Bate brothers? What do they have to do with the ghost?
A
As with the above question, this is a matter of a plot thread being drastically shortened from the book version, but not removed entirely. The film describes the brothers as escapees from an insane asylum who end up squatting in Eva Galli's old house, having been given "permission from the owner." The elder brother Gregory later claims that Eva, whom he describes as "our benefactor," has promised to make them immortal. In contrast, the book version of Gregory had accepted that gift of immortality decades earlier, and his younger brother, to whom a young Sears James was a schoolteacher, soon followed, despite Sears' attempts to save him. Gregory was a major nemesis in the novel, as opposed to the film, where he appears in a scant three scenes and has no supernatural powers.Curiously, the film never deals with the fate of Fenny, who is never seen again after killing Sears. In the first draft of the script, dated December 3, 1980, the film ended with a scene of the young boy, now alone after Gregory's death, prowling around the headstones of Milburn's cemetery, his whimpering amongst the headstones evoking the story that Sears tells at the beginning of the film.
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Photos from cast
Alice Krige
small 4 leaf clover tir to still Symbol girly clover