shark-43
GHOST FEVER is possibly one of the greatest bad movies ever made. MADE might be too strong of a word - regurgitated and somewhat spliced together in an editing bay is maybe more apropos. Hemsley had a lot of faith in this Ghostbusters-like rip-off and it tanked big time and messy lawsuits followed btwn Hemsley and the producers. The director, Lee Madden was so aghast at the finished product he took his name off and they slapped on the infamous Alan Smithee credit. The script is credited to three hacks and the script is truly awful. Terrible. Sucky. Not one good joke. Plenty of groin and crotch humor and a truly offensive scene where they find machines in the basement of a Southern mansion that were used on slaves. One of the machines (which of course Hemsley gets trapped in) has two large hammers coming down close to the person's groin while a device is twirled into their backside (supposedly to give them rhythm!!!) Yikes. Oddly though Hemsley seems to turn over lots of the movie to his co-star Luis Avalos and Avalos gives one of the worst "comedic" performances ever captured on film. His double takes fail, his funny faces, his "fear" of the ghosts, his physical comedy - all of it fails. Yet, because the movie is jawdroppingly incompetent, it is cruelly enjoyable. You keep getting shocked by another terrible set piece. Like when a mummy appears wearing shades a bow-tie and a top hat and proceeds to BREAK DANCE. Then Hemsley and Avalos do a dance number and then when you are begging the movie to end there is a looooong boxing scene where Avalos boxes Smokin Joe Frazier (this scene goes on and on and has not one funny moment). A true cinematic nightmare. Seek it out if you DARE!!!
miooolre
I agree with many other here that this movie is SOOOOOO BAD it is good. You will laugh unintentionally at the horrible trainwreck this movie is. Its shot badly, acted badly and the "script" is atrocious. They tried to jump on the Ghostbusters bandwagon but there are sequences in here that will make your jaw drop to the floor and then your jaw will try and leave the room. The break dancing scene is truly memorable and yes, lots of "groin" jokes. Wow!! There is also a long boxing subplot that comes out of nowhere. It is deathly unfunny. And horribly done. All the effects are lame. But....A great bad 1980s disaster. Just the kind of thing those recent great Slate podcasts highlight!
Spooky_1013_99
I remember my mother renting me this movie when I was just a tyke.I haven't seen it since I was around kindergarten aged I guess, but the movie made a lasting impression. I remember a big antebellum mansion, and the slave torture device that made Sherman Helmsly walk funny,I loved it. I have to have had my mother rent me this movie a dozen times or more. This is one of those rare low budget movies that make scrounging threw the discount bin worth it. Now that I know the title I am going to have to go searching for the DVD. I loved ghost stories and this was right up my alley. I had been looking for the title of this movie for ages. IMDb is just great!
Hitchcock Poser
Mind you, it has been years since I've seen this movie, almost a decade and a half. But when I did see it, it was fantastic. My brother and I would always rent it if there was nothing better to get. And to us this was a scary movie, we were able to use our imagination (which is why we liked it). We would be scared and be laughing our heads off at the same time. Mind you he was three and I was six. And after I saw Nightmare on Elm St. with a friend of mine a year later, Ghost Fever for some reason just wasn't scary anymore. But it left great memories of childhood. I'm sure we all have the movies from that past that we see now and say "What was I thinking?" and Ghost Fever is one of mine.
AD
