Back in the 80's, when I grew to adulthood, Michael J. Fox was pretty much at the top of his game. Fresh off his success on Family Ties, there was Teen Wolf ... and IMDB.com is down, so yea. Well then. I can't check the rest of his movie career, but I know the Secret of My Success was in there somewhere. Anyway, he was huge, for, you know, a smaller guy. I tried to check out his new show but I wasn't very fond of it. Not that there was anything wrong with it, exactly, but there's no monsters and it only lasts a half hour, so it's a little short for my long attention span.
The Frighteners (1996) is, in my opinion, some of Michael J. Fox's greatest work. Granted, it's the only one of Michael J. Fox's movies that has any monsters in it besides Teen Wolf, and that's probably why I like it. Besides, Teen Wolf was more of a comedy than this was. On to the summary!
There have been a slew of deaths in Frank Bannister's town. Heart attacks in perfectly healthy people. The medical examiner described the attacks as if something had just grabbed the hearts of the victims and just squeezed the life out of them. Frank Bannister doesn't care about any of that, though. Frank Bannister is a fake psychic, who uses each death, each funeral, as an excuse to prey on the beliefs of the deceased's loved ones, in order to make money. I can't really blame Frank, though. He used to be a promising young Architect with a beautiful wife, but nowadays, he's just trying to make a living. You see, the deaths started 5 years ago, and there were 28 of them, starting with... Frank's wife. And ever since then, Frank's been a fake psychic trying to make ends meet. A fake psychic, who can actually see the dead...
I really liked this movie. I watch it pretty much every time I see it on. Great acting, almost two hours long, ghosts, spirits, poltergeists, horrors from beyond the grave, and a little bit of comedy tossed into the mix. It even has Jeffrey-goddamn-Combs as a paranormal investigator working for the FBI! :-D Special effects were good, and aside from the lack of nudity, I can't say as there's a thing wrong with this movie. Story was excellent, the action was nearly constant, so many characters made an appearance, there was even R. Lee Ermey (I think that's his name? damn imdb is still down) as the ghost of a drill sergeant keeping the dead in line. lol You got your basic overbearing mom, a black guy from the 70's, a geeky schoolteacher the likes of Ichabod Crane, a gunslinger from the old west, a shrieking harpy, a clueless husband, a bored housewife, a psychotic Federal agent, a small-town sheriff, a mass murderer, an occultist... Sheeeit I think I've just named everyone on the planet. lol And everyone gels together in a coherent, exciting tale! It's playing on Netflix, if you'd like to watch it.
In other news, I'm almost better. :-) Still feeling a bit peckish now and then, but pretty sure I'm winning this one. Two more weeks before Halloween! Woohoo! Can already feel the sugar rush coming on! Almost full moon, too! Maybe I can dig up another werewolf movie. I know you guys love them as much as I do. lol I've been looking for a suitable double feature to watch but I've just been too under the weather to find something I could focus on. Maybe this weekend. Until tomorrow night, then!
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