ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - July 19th
"THE FRIGHTENERS" released in 1996
Watch The Frighteners trailer below!
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Six years after a car accident that killed his wife and left him with extra sensory abilities to see the spirits of the dead, Frank Bannister (Fox) and his motley crew of ghosts - 1970's street gangster Cyrus (Chi McBride), 1950s nerd Stuart (Jim Fyfe), and The Judge (John Astin), a gunslinger from the Old West - regularly "haunt" the houses in the small town of Fairwater until they call Frank to "exorcise" them for a fee. Soon after Frank "cleanses" the house a local couple, town doctor Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado) and her health nut husband Ray (Peter Dobson), Ray dies of an apparant heart attack, with a number appearing on his forehead that only Frank can see. Frank discovers that a demonic spirit appearing as the Grim Reaper is killing people and making it look like natural causes. His ability to see the numbers that mark the intended victims, brings Frank under the suspicion of the deranged FBI Agent Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs). Realizing he cannot face the Reaper in his physical form, Frank convinces Lucy to help have an "out of body" experience to confront the murderous ghost, which he uncovers as the spirit of dead Fairwater mass murderer Johnny Bartlett (Jake Busey). Pursued by both Dammers and Bartlett's psychotic accomplice Patricia Bradley (Dee Wallace-Stone), Frank and Lucy race to the scene of Bartlett's last killing spree, the now abandoned Fairwater Psychiatric Hospital, to send Bartlett back to Hell once and for all!
Top: Bannister (Michael J Fox) tries to protect Lucy (Trini Alvarado) from the Reaper;
Above: The Grim Reaper appears to claim another victim!
While writing the script for the Academy Award nominated film Heavenly Creatures (1994) in 1992, Jackson and his co-writer (and wife) Fran Walsh first conceived the idea for The Frighteners. Sending the treatment for the film to their agent in Los Angeles, The Frighteners caught the attention of producer Robert Zemeckis who originally intended to direct the movie himself as a feature film spin-off to his own TV show, Tales from the Crypt. When the final screenplay was delivered in 1994, Zemeckis realized the film would be better being directed by Jackson himself (given Jackson's horror/comedy pedigree of Bad Taste (1987) and Braindead (1992)) and brought in Universal pictures to fund and distribute. The studio also granted Zemeckis and Jackson the extremely rare right of total artistic control and the right of final cut privilege.
Judge: When a man's jawbone drops off it's time to reassess the situation.
Top: Even ghosts can get scared, as Stuart (Jim Fyfe) and Cyrus (Chi McBride) see
the Reaper coming for them; Above: The aging frightener, The Judge (John Astin)
No other actor was considered for the Frank Bannister role other than Michael J. Fox. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh were having a meeting with Robert Zemeckis about the film and his name came up. Jackson liked the idea, and sent the script to Fox. Chi McBride soon came on board, having been impressed by Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures. Jackson loved Jeffrey Combs' work on the Re-Animator (1985) movies so much that he asked the casting director to find out whether Combs was still available and signed him to play the Dammers (it was Combs who suggested the Adolf Hitler-inspired haircut for his character, to show Milton Dammers' extreme sense of nationalism after serving his country for so long). Jackson and Walsh had written the role of the Drill Sgt. ghost as a spoof of R Lee Emery's performance in Full Metal Jacket, intending to have the role played by a local New Zealand actor. But they didn't feel the actors who auditioned were right and finally ended up approaching Ermey himself, and accepted the role.
Sergeant Hiles: Get back in the goddamn ground you unorganized grab-asstic gob of teleplasmic shit!
Top: Cemetery "guardian" the Drill Sgt. (R Lee Emery) threatens Bannister;
Above: Deranged FBI agent Dammers (played by Jeffrey Combs)
On Jackson's insistence that The Frighteners be filmed entirely in New Zealand, the studio agreed on the condition that Jackson made downtown Wellington look similar to a American mid-western town as the setting of Fairwater. Jackson and co also expanded their then-fledgling visual effects company, Weta Digital, from the single workstation needed for the effects for Heavenly Creatures, to over 35 computers and developed an elaborate motion control system that allowed the filmmakers to shoot multiple repetitive takes allowing them to composite the "ghosts" into a live action shot later. Prosthetic makeup and practical effects were handled by longtime Jackson collaborator Richard Taylor, with the Judge's make-up designed and created by legendary make-up artist, Rick Baker.
Frank Bannister: [to Stuart and Cyrus] Why is it that flies stick to you guys like shit to a blanket?
Cyrus: Ha ha, very funny. You're a funny guy, Frank. You know, all you think about is yourself. I could complain, too, you know. I would like some new clothes. You get to dress nice. Here I am still looking like Linc from The Mod Squad.
Frank Bannister: You died in the 70's. It's a bummer.
Above: Dammers' meets Patricia in the asylum...
In one of the longest shoots ever approved by Universal at that time, The Frighteners took almost 7-months to complete principal photograph. The extended shooting schedule owed much to the fact that scenes where ghosts and human characters interacted had to be filmed twice; once with human characters acting on set, and then with the ghost characters acting against a blue screen. Such sequences required precise timing from the cast as they traded dialogue with characters who were merely blank air. Six weeks into the shoot, cinematographer Alun Bollinger had a serious car accident and had to replaced by John Blick (once recovered, Bollinger later alternated duties with Blick for the remainder of the shoot). Star Michael J Fox was also injured on set, breaking his foot while filming a simple scene running through the forest.
Top: Patricia "Patty" Bradley (Dee Wallace), Bartlett's unhinged girlfriend;
Above: Mass murderer Johnny Bartlett (Jake Busey) returns for the grave
The hardest challenge for the digital animators at Weta was creating the Grim Reaper, which went through many transformations before finding physical form. "We set out with the intention of doing the Reaper as a rod puppet, maybe shooting it in a water tank," Jackson commented. "We even thought of filming someone, dressed in costume, at different camera speeds." But in the end, it was decided that using computer animation would be the easiest task. Some shots were handled by a small New Zealand company called Pixel Perfect, many of whose employees would eventually join Weta Digital. With digital effects work running behind schedule, Zemeckis convinced Wes Takahashi, an animation supervisor from visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, to help work on The Frighteners with an additional $6 million in financing and fifteen digital animators and computer workstations (some were borrowed from Universal and other effects companies in the US).
Above: Producer Robert Zemeckis, Michael J Fox and Peter Jackson on
location in Wellington, New Zealand
The Frighteners also received an accelerated release date, four months earlier than planned. Zemeckis and Jackson lobbied to have the film released during the Halloween weekend, but Universal insisted on a summer release. The move ultimately backfired as it didn't do as well at the box office, grossing a little over $16 million in the US and nearly $30 million worldwide (against a $26 million budget). The Frighteners did however garner mostly positive reviews with Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times stated "Director Peter Jackson, at home with all kinds of excess in New Zealand, keeps everything spinning nicely, not even losing a step when the mood turns increasingly disturbing." Janet Maslin from The New York Times enjoyed The Frighteners, but "walked out the theater with mixed emotions," she commented that "Peter Jackson deserves more enthusiasm for expert, imaginative effects than for his live actors anyhow. These lively touches would leave The Frighteners looking more like a more frantic Beetlejuice if Jackson's film weren't so wearyingly overcrowded. The Frighteners is not immune to overkill, even though most of its characters are already dead."
[discussing the Reaper]
Stuart: Come on. You're out of your mind. You're talking about a mythical figure. A pseudo-religious icon from the 12th century.
Judge: Save your pea brain prattle for the classroom,boy. That was the soul collector and he's been taking people out since time began. He's been going about some dark business here in Fairwater and we ain't nothing but worm bait. When your number's up, that's it.
Above: The Grim Reaper takes another soul!
The Frighteners was also Fox's last leading role in a live-action feature film, having decided during production he no longer wanted to be away from his family for such an extended time and returned to TV soon-after starring in Spin City (Fox would later retire from acting entirely due to the effects of Parkinson's disease). Despite the opinion that The Frighteners should have remained a Tales from the Crypt movie/episode, it has garnered a cult following as part of Jackson's splatter period of films, and demonstrated that the New Zealand film industry was capable of completing a large, effects driven film - resulting in Jackson convincing New Line Cinema to film the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in Wellington.
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 64%
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