‘The good. The bad. The Satanic.’
Ghost Town is a 1988 American horror film directed by Australian Richard McCarthy [as Richard Governor] and [uncredited] Mac Ahlberg. The script was written by Duke Sandefur (Necronaut; The Phantom of the Opera), based on a story by David Schmoeller (Puppet Master; Crawlspace; Tourist Trap) for Empire Pictures.
According to the book Empire of the ‘B’s, director McCarthy (who had only previously directed an Australian edition of Benny Hill) allegedly discarded the script and improvised whole scenes before either walking out or being thrown off the production.
In the US, the film was released by Transworld on November 11, 1988 in a limited release, only showing on eight screens. New World Pictures released it on VHS. A US Blu-ray was released in July 2016 by Shout! Factory.
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Main cast:
Franc Luz (The Nest), Catherine Hickland (Witchery; Robowar; Werewolf TV series), Jimmie F. Skaggs (Dead End; Hollow Man; Puppet Master), Bruce Glover (Simon Says; Die Hard Dracula; Night of the Scarecrow), Zitto Kazann, Blake Conway, Laura Schaefer, Michael Alldredge.
Plot:
Young bride to be Kate Barrett is kidnapped off of a desert road. Deputy Langley is assigned to find the young woman. Once Langley tracks down Kate, the two find themselves stuck in literally in the past. The two must find out how to destroy the evil that has plagued the “ghost town” for decades or just become a page of the towns horrible history themselves…
Reviews:
” …the movie is beautifully photographed by Mac Ahlberg; and the performances are convincing. What starts out as an interesting premise, however, soon turns into a run-of-the-mill, Saturday-afternoon bad-guy western–the only difference being that here the villains are zombies.” TV Guide
“Though a little slow-paced and adequately acted, the film has a nice ghost-town atmosphere, thanks to Ahlberg’s clever blending, as in his work on Prison, of genre conventions so that typical Western images work in a horror-movie context.” The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror
” …it conjures up an atmosphere not unlike two other late-period Empire chillers: Prison and Catacombs. But Ghost Town is easily the least of the three (in spite of a superbly-realised dream sequence midway through) and ultimately a missed opportunity. Shame.” Empire of the ‘B’s
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“The pacing for this movie is extremely slow, I swear they shot the scene when he walks to the town in real time, cos it takes close to 15 minutes for him to get there and the whole scene is spliced with stock footage of spiders, birds, snakes, crows, and scorpions. Save for Bruce Glover who plays a Wise Blind Man named the “Dealer”, most of the acting in this ranges from bland to horrible.” Tom, Shit Movie Fest
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Cast and characters:
- Franc Luz as Langley
- Catherine Hickland as Kate
- Jimmie F. Skaggs as Devlin
- Bruce Glover as Dealer
- Zitto Kazann as Blacksmith
- Blake Conway as Harper
- Laura Schaefer as Etta
- Michael Alldredge as Bubba
Filming locations:
Old Tucson Studios, Tucson, Arizona, USA
