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The Ghosts and Mr. Fox

The Frighteners, starring Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, John Astin, and Jake Busey; directed by Peter Jackson

Michael J. Fox , whose career of late has looked ready to give up the ghost, brings it back to life in The Frighteners. Fox plays Frank Bannister, a swindler in the ectoplasm game who's got attitude like Bill Murray and his fellow low-rent exterminators of terminated souls: Frank likes to hang around at funerals handing out his business cards. When he finds a mourner whose house is haunted, he visits their home and gets rid of their poltergeists by slamming toilet seats and making beds fly.

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Frank can do this because the unseen spirits causing all the trouble are his semitransparent business partners: there's the Judge (John Astin), a dead Old West gunslinger whose jawbone the dog keeps running off with; Cyrus (Chi McBride), a Superfly-wannabe who is mortified that he was buried in a 1970s outfit; and Stuart (Jim Fyfe), a quiet, Casperish ghost. It's as if Murray and the Ghostbusters ghosts had joined forces to slime the customers. Except that Frank isn't a total fraud: he really can see ghosts, because he had a near-death experience a few years back when his wife died in a car wreck caused by his awful driving.

To complicate things, Frank is being stalked by F.B.I. agent Dammers (Jeffrey Combs); seems people keep dying whenever our hero is around. A scary, Grim Reaper type is the true killer, but only Frank and the victims can see him. The serial-killer ghost is somehow mixed up with an old mansion where a real serial killer, Johnny Bartlett (Gary Busey's toothy, look-alike son Jake Busey), used to live. When Frank and his new girlfriend (Trini Alvarado) sneak into the mansion, it's as creepy and tense as a slasher movie, but without the gore.

71 Director Peter Jackson (whose last film was the equally frightening, although very different, Heavenly Creatures) does a great job of making the scary ghosts scary and the funny ghosts funny. The ghosts are like cartoon characters in this movie; physical decay hasn't been this hysterical since An American Werewolf in London. Cars can squish tire tracks into their chests, and machine guns fired by dead Marine drill instructors can keep them at bay. The best shot in The Frighteners features the top ghost, whose face has been smashed into a blob and is oozing down a tombstone, still talking contemptuously to Frank.

As for Fox, he is kind of like a more bedraggled version of himself in Back to the Future (which was directed by this film's exec producer, Robert Zemeckis). It's the same old role, but it's a good role. The movie pops reliably, like a string of ladyfinger firecrackers in different colors. The mystery plot is no great mystery, but at least it makes sense, unlike most movies these days. The horror isn't very horrible, but it is effectively suspenseful. And the comedy is likable, if only occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. The Frighteners may not be to die for, but it's got lots of vital signs. --Phil North

(Rated R for terror and violence.)

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