25th anniversary of "The Frighteners" - July 19th

"Give it up, Frank! Death ain't no way to make a living!"
Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) are the one and only living exorcist and official ghost hunter in town. A special ability that he got from having survived a horrible car accident. This "gift" of his, makes it possible of seeing and communicating with the dead, and it does not take very long before realising the potential it has, and by turning it into a very profitable business opportunity.
But when people all over town are beginning to drop like flies, Bannister has to come with the fact that if he wants to have any living and breathing customers left to hustle in the near future, he has to get to the bottom of what is going on. Because it seems like the grim reaper has arrived, and he is on a real roll and with no time to lose.

I remember stumbling upon the film's fantastic and very cool looking movie poster as kid. It was all over town and in several of my local video stores during the summer of 97. But by the end of the year, a lot us of kids had already forgotten about it and moved on, as very few local cinemas seemed to care showing it, either that or you had to bring along a parent, and my dad worked all the time, and my mum hated horror movies.
6 years later, and Peter Jackson was now not just a smalltime "cult" director, but a real Hollywood big shot with his own groundbreaking fantasy/adventure trilogy, Lord of the Rings. And in summer of 2003 I guess it was about time to cash in on his lesser known titles, so I bought the newly released (DVDs) that included, Bad Taste (1987), Meet The Feebles (1989), Brain Dead aka Dead Alive (1992) and The Frighteners (1996).

The first three titles were more in the vain of typical 80s low budget or b-movies that often seem to pay tribute to the likes of Troma productions or Evil Dead/Re-Animator films, with the over-the-top violence, tons of splatter/blood scenes and hilarious badly made monster special effect etc.
But for me, the true standout film, was The Frighteners.
It was a comedy all right, but still a lot darker than the other ones, and featured a much bigger budget, names and very heavy use of CGI animation. So it was clearly a movie that the studios had hoped would be huge box office summer blockbuster, kind of like the Ghostbusters of the 90s, but sadly it tanked big time.

I guess some of the reason might have been down to just poor marketing, as I remember there were only a short 25-30 seconds teaser clip that kept popping up on TV around summer 97, and it did not do any justice to the film in any way, and looked more like it was taken right out of a Jim Carrey slapstick comedy.
Even though it starts off as a quirky, overnatural comedy/adventure film, not that unlike of say, Tim Burton and his classic, Beetlejuice (1988), it soon becomes very clear that The Frighteners is not only about the laughs, as it changes to a more violent and dark tone, which I guess upset a lot of people/critics.

To this day, it seems like the film is most known either for the heavy use of CGI, being a flop or because it was Michael J. Fox last leading movie role, and he really went out with style, as I think that Frank Bannister is one of his best roles ever. Blending in slapstick comedy, romance, action and a bit of dark/dramatic moments, and it also helped being backed up with a highly talented cast including: The beautiful Trini Alvarado, Jeffrey Combs as the eccentric and hilarious Special Agent Milon Dammers, 70s-80s scream queen Dee Wallace Stone delivering some of her best work as the psychotic Patricia Ann Bradley and then you have the great John Astin as a crazy ghost along with Chi McBride, Peter Dobson, Jim Fyfe, R. Lee Ermey and of course Jake Busey.