Thoughts on High Spirits

    I wanted to like 1988's High Spirits more than I did. It had a fun high concept, of ghosts haunting an Irish castle and the owner (Peter O'Toole), the descendant of the ghosts, trying to save the castle from foreclosure by bringing in American tourists to stay in the hotel and have the Irish staff pose as ghosts to create fun hauntings.

    But then the movie decides to focus more on "romances" between an American couple (Steve Guttenberg, Beverly D'Angelo) and the 200-year old ill-fated ghost couple that ended in murder-suicide on their wedding night (Daryl Hannah, Liam Neeson), and the ghosts quickly are in lust for the people, with obvious green-screen effects every time the ghosts do something ghostly, and it gets icky to watch.

    Liam Neeson's character was a smelly, farting brute who murdered his wife, and he immediately pervs on Beverly D'Angelo's character, and after she's initially scared, she starts to like it. Similarly, Daryl Hannah's ghost immediately falls for Steve Guttenberg's character (typically playing his bland 80s self). The ghosts fall for them because the couple accidentally interrupts the loop of their murder-suicide, playing out every day for 200 years, and start thinking more independently and wanting forever love with the couple, which plays out in an ending that I found off-putting and gross, especially with emotional manipulation and using sexual assault to get what they want.

    Meanwhile, the side characters get wasted, with a pre-fame Jennifer Tilly being underused as one of the tourists, and the Irish staff mostly seen as comic relief instead of focusing more on them trying to do ghost antics to save the castle. And there is a fun part where a kid gets pulled into a painting by an octopus and turns into a painted figure himself, reminding me of The Witches, where a little girl gets trapped in a painting by a witch and slowly ages there until she disappears.

    I did like the set of the castle, it looked lived-in and had a fun historical, ancient feeling to it. And I did like how O'Toole's mother was still in contact with her husband's ghost, continuing to live a happy life with him in the castle.

    I felt like this movie wasted its potential, and could have been more fun, but it spent way too much time on the romances with the couple and the ghosts, and it turned sour for me.