Ghost Story (1981). I haven't read the novel yet, but I picked up this Scream Factory Blu-ray years ago. The cover simply captivated my attention. Four old guys come together in a dark room and become the Chowder Society. I love this name. Anyway, their primary goal is to scare each other. to tell ghost stories and perhaps smoke some stogies. But lately, the group is having nightmares every night.
The cozy atmosphere is the best thing about this movie, until the ghost (Alma or Eva) starts acting ghosty. We find out after a slog of story that the Chowder Society is collectively guilty of a most heinous accidental death. I won't ruin it, because it was quite interesting how things unfolded 50 years earlier. But for some reason, the ghost shows up and starts picking them off, starting with one of the member's twin sons. She falls in love with one, and when he figures out that something is not quite right with her, she is rejected and moves onto his brother. Once he is dispatched it's back to Milburn for revenge upon the Society.
Alice Krige plays Alma, and she is delicious here. She's enchanting, a seductress, and just a badass when she needs to be. When you realize that she becomes the Borg Queen in decades to come, you know she's a tough bitch.
I think this is the first Fred Astaire movie I have ever watched. And as Ricky, the apologetically apologist most of the film to the other members of the Chowder Society, even way back in the 1930s, he is the first to understand, or comprehend, who is behind the deaths of his friends, even when the deaths appear natural.
Also, this is the second movie I have seen with Craig Wasson, who was also the psychiatrist in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. His character again here is mostly spent trying to come to terms with what is happening and how to comprehend it.
I don't think of this movie as an annual Halloween movie. For me, it's a neat atmospheric ghost film to watch when the moment is right, sometime in autumn or a snowy winter evening.
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