Drew Turney
By Drew Turney
The darling of the 1990 box office season, and directed – although hard to believe now – by spoof movie godfather Jerry Zucker.
Anyone who doesn’t know the story of Sam’s love for Molly from beyond the grave, using gifted but fraudulent medium Oda Mae (Goldberg) must not have been near a cinema since ”Back to the Future” five years before. It was the cultural product of the new decade, turning a $22m budget into a half billion dollar behemoth.
And like the most effective tales, it’s simple. A man and woman madly in love with each other are cruelly separated by a mugger’s bullet.
Sam turns away from the inviting light to pursue the crook, then returns to see his own bloodied body cradled in Molly’s arms.
Dead and not loving it, Sam is determined to bring the evil Willy to justice, and he follows his best friend Carl to the thug’s apartment but is horrified to learn the mugging was a hit to swindle Sam out of money, and Carl was in on it.
With the race on to save Molly from the scheming hands of Carl and the lecherous hands of Willy, Sam tracks down phony medium and con artist Oda Mae to be his earthly conduit as she can actually hear him (for once in her life).
Who can forget the shadow monsters who come to collect the villains, the tears streaming down Demi’s face amid that short-cropped do or the aching desire of the clay making scene to the strains of the Righteous Brother’s ‘Unchained Melody’ (still the record holder for occupying number one on the charts twice with the longest gap in between)?
Big laughs, big thrills, a huge heart and a tearjerker up with the best of them, it deserves its place among the most popular movies of all time.
Blu-Ray Details and Extras
What’s New? Well, the beautiful BR-Ripe transfer of course. This is as probably as good as you’d get the 19-year-old film to look these days – which isn’t to say it’s only passable, just suggesting that there are some moments that don’t look as vibrant or as high in detail as others. By-and-large though, it’s a glorious transfer.
The audio-track is good too. It’s not ear-splitting good, but it’s good.
What’s not so new? The extras. Nothing on here that wasn’t on the “Ghost : Special Collector’s Edition” SD release from a year or so ago (Commentary from director Zucker and writer Bruce Joel Rubin, numerous featurettes, a retrospective documentary featuring the core cast, photo gallery and trailer – – actually, the trailer is in HD, as opposed to everything else which is in SD, so maybe that’s considered new?).
