Format: DVD from personal collection on The New Portable.
Evidently, I love horror comedies, because I appear to have a lot of them in my personal collection. Of them, The Frighteners is one of my favorites. It does just about everything right. Additionally, aside from a making-of documentary, The Frighteners stands in the unique position of being the movie that Peter Jackson made immediately before he made the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sure, there’s a world of difference here, but there are a few spots of similarity, even if the effects aren’t that great in places.
The Frighteners starts with the premise that ghosts are real and can be seen by people who have had a traumatic experience. In this case, our ghost seer is Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox), a former architect who now runs a paranormal investigation company. This company consists really of just himself essentially scamming the people in his area. However, Frank really can see ghosts. His scam requires the assistance of actual ghosts who invade people’s houses, cause some paranormal activity, and, when Frank is called in, disappear so that Frank can “clean” the house. Frank’s first assistant is known as The Judge (John Astin), but the two handling most of the work as the film beings are Cyrus (Chi McBride) and Stu (Jim Fyfe).
