Coordinates | 31°6′12″N77°10′20″N |
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name | The Frighteners |
border | yes |
director | Peter Jackson |
producer | Peter JacksonJamie SelkirkRobert Zemeckis |
writer | Fran WalshPeter Jackson |
starring | Michael J. FoxTrini AlvaradoJohn AstinJeffrey CombsDee WallaceJake BuseyChi McBride |
music | Danny Elfman |
cinematography | John BlickAlun Bollinger |
editing | Jamie Selkirk |
studio | WingNut Films |
distributor | Universal Pictures |
released | |
runtime | 110 minutes122 minutes |
country | |
language | English |
budget | $30 million |
gross | $29,359,216 }} |
The Frighteners is a 1996 comedy horror film directed by Peter Jackson and co-written with his wife, Fran Walsh. The film's cast includes Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, John Astin, Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace, Jake Busey and Chi McBride. The Frighteners tells the story of Frank Bannister (Fox), an architect who develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts after his wife's murder. He initially uses his new abilities to work with various spirits to cheat money out of customers for his "ghosthunting" business. However, the spirit of a mass murderer comes back from Hell, able to attack the living and the dead, prompting Frank to investigate the supernatural presence.
Jackson and Walsh conceived the idea for The Frighteners during the scriptwriting phase of Heavenly Creatures. Robert Zemeckis hired the duo to write the script, with the original intention of Zemeckis directing The Frighteners as a spin-off film of the television series, Tales from the Crypt. With Jackson and Walsh's first draft submitted in January 1994, Zemeckis believed the film would be better off directed by Jackson, produced by Zemeckis and funded/distributed by Universal Pictures. The visual effects were created by Jackson's Weta Digital, which had only been in existence for three years. This, plus the fact that The Frighteners required more digital effects shots than almost any movie made up until that time, resulted in the eighteen-month period for effects work by Weta Digital being largely stressed.
Despite a rushed post-production schedule, Universal Pictures was so impressed with Jackson's rough cut on The Frighteners, the studio moved the theatrical release date closer by four months. The film was not a box office success, but received generally positive reviews from critics. The Frighteners is also Michael J. Fox's last leading role in a live-action feature film; he semi-retired from the film industry due to the effects of Parkinson's disease.
In 1990, the once-successful, but selfish and alcoholic, architect Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) loses his wife, Debra (Angela Bloomfield), in a car accident. He gives up his profession, letting his unfinished "dream house" sit incomplete for years. After his wife's death, for which Frank was suspected, but never convicted, Frank gains the power to see ghosts and befriends three: a 1970s gangster named Cyrus (Chi McBride), a 1950s nerd named Stuart (Jim Fyfe) and a gunslinger from the Old West called the Judge (John Astin). Cyrus, Stuart and the Judge haunt houses in the area to accumulate work for Frank's ghostbusting business; Frank then "exorcises" the houses for a fee, even though he is depicted by locals as a conman. One of the houses is that of Dr. Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado) and her husband, Ray (Peter Dobson); Frank discovers that Ray has been killed, and an encounter with his ghost leads Frank to discover that an entity resembling the Grim Reaper is killing people and marking numbers on their foreheads.
Frank tries helping the people whom the Reaper is targeting because his wife was found after the car crash with a similar number carved into her forehead. Because Frank can see the numbers ahead of time he can foretell the murders, but this puts him under suspicion with the police and Agent Milton Dammers (Jeffrey Combs), an FBI agent who is convinced that Frank is responsible for the killings, using some sort of psychic power to stop the hearts of those he subconsciously wishes dead while creating the visage of the Grim Reaper to absolve himself of guilt. Frank is arrested for the death of the town's newspaper editor, who despised Frank because of his reputation. Lucy visits Frank in prison, and realizing that Lucy is the Reaper's next target, Frank attempts to prevent her death. They escape from prison with the help of Cyrus and Stuart. Frustrated by his inability to fight the Reaper in a mortal body, Frank wants to commit suicide so he can stop the Reaper's killing spree. Instead, Lucy helps Frank have a near death experience by entering hypothermia and using barbiturates to stop his heart. Dammers abducts Lucy, then confesses that he had been a victim of Charles Manson and his "Family" in 1969. Frank appears to come to Lucy's aid. In his ghostly form, Frank confronts the Reaper and discovers that the killer is the ghost of Johnny Charles Bartlett (Jake Busey). :In 1963, Bartlett, obsessed with becoming an infamous serial killer, murdered twelve people in a sanatorium with the assistance of 15-year-old Patricia Bradley, Bartlett's underaged girlfriend and daughter of the sanatorium director. The two were arrested and tried. Patricia was sent to prison as an accessory despite her claims of innocence. Years later she was released to live with her overbearing mother under observation. Bartlett was sentenced to death by electric chair.
Using Barlett's scythe against him, Frank rids Bartlett of his Reaper form, but before he can do anything else, Frank's spirit is forced back into his body by Lucy resuscitating him. After learning the Reaper's identity, Lucy worries that Patricia will become one of Bartlett's targets. She goes to Patricia's house and discovers that Patricia is on friendly terms with Bartlett's ghost, who tells her to kill Lucy. Patricia kills her mother and tries to kill Lucy, but Frank rescues her. Lucy and Frank trap Bartlett's spirit in his urn, which they find in Patricia's room. Hoping to take the ashes to holy ground, they run for the chapel of the now-abandoned psychiatric hospital to send Bartlett's ghost to Hell. Frank realizes that this is the hospital where the original crimes were committed, helplessly reliving the events of Bartlett's killing spree in flashback visions, while Patricia, armed with a shotgun, and Dammers chase them through the ruins. Dammers grabs the urn of ashes and tosses them in the breeze, releasing Bartlett's ghost again before having his head shot off by Patricia. Bartlett's ghost and Patricia hunt down Frank and Lucy. Frank suddenly makes sense of his repressed memories about the car crash that killed his wife. Bartlett's ghost apparently drove the two off the road, killing Frank's wife. Then Patricia, who had just been released from prison, used a utility knife to cut the number into her forehead.
Patricia manages to strangle Frank with the shotgun, but his ghost returns just as Patricia is about to kill Lucy. Frank rips Patricia's spirit from her body and drags her up towards Heaven with him, with Bartlett in pursuit. Frank stays in Heaven while both Bartlett and Patricia's ghosts are dragged down to Hell. After meeting his wife's spirit, as well as Cyrus and Stuart, Frank is told it is not yet his time and is sent back to earth, waking up in Lucy's arms. Frank and Lucy fall in love, and due to her experiences, Lucy can now see ghosts as well. Frank returns to being an architect, demolishing the dream house for his wife that he never finished and building a life with Lucy. As for Dammers, he is now a ghost and is last seen in the back of the sheriff's car.
Peter Jackson cameos as a man with piercings. Melanie Lynskey cameos as a deputy. R. Lee Ermey cameos as the Ghost of Sgt. Hiles.
The extended shooting schedule for The Frighteners 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. The two elements would later be digitally composited into one shot with the use of split screen photography. Such sequences required precise timing from the cast as they traded dialogue with characters who were merely blank air. 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." Test footage was shot with puppets and a man in a Reaper suit, but in the end, it was decided that using computer animation would be the easiest task. Another entirely computerized character called "the Gatekeeper", a winged cherub who helps guard the cemetery, was deleted from the final cut.
With digital effects work running behind schedule, producer Robert Zemeckis convinced Wes Takahashi (from George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic) to help work on The Frighteners. "The shots Zemeckis showed me were pretty remarkable," Takahashi reflected, "but there were still about 400 shots to do, and everyone was kind of worried." Takahashi was quickly drafted as a visual effects supervisor, and began looking at the schedule, trying to work out whether The Frighteners could be finished in time. "There was no way we'd make the deadline. I figured out a concerted plan involving Jackson and Zemeckis to convince Universal it was worthy of asking for more money." The executives at Universal proposed splitting some of the shots to visual effects companies in the United States, but Jackson, for whom the film was a chance to show New Zealand filmmaking could stand alongside Hollywood, convinced Universal otherwise. Instead, The Frighteners received an accelerated release date, four months earlier than planned, and an additional $6 million in financing, with fifteen digital animators and computer workstations (some were borrowed from Universal and other effects companies in the US). Andrew Adamson was hired as a digital effects supervisor.
name | The Frighteners |
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type | Soundtrack |
artist | Danny Elfman |
released | July 19, 1996 |
genre | Film score |
length | 41:14 |
label | Universal |
reviews | * Allmusic [ link] Filmtracks link |
last album | Black Beauty (1994) |
this album | The Frighteners (1996) |
next album | ''Men in Black (1997) }} |
Critical reception of the soundtrack was average. Jason Ankeny of album database Allmusic described the soundtrack as "imaginative" giving it three stars out of five. This was a lower rating on the site then Elfman's other scores of the era, such as Mission: Impossible, Mars Attacks! and Flubber. The soundtrack review website Filmtracks referred to the album as "lacking much cohesion or singular creativity".
Although reviews were mostly positive, The Frighteners also received negative reviews. Todd McCarthy of Variety thought that the movie should have remained an episode of Tales from the Crypt. Critic James Berardinelli believed that although The Frighteners wasn't "a bad film", it was "a disappointment, following Jackson's powerful, true-life matricide tale, Heavenly Creatures", and because of that "The Frighteners fell short of expectations by being just one of many in the long line of 1996 summer movies." Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert, felt that Jackson was more interested in prosthetic makeup designs, computer animation and special effects than writing a cohesive storyline. Ebert and critic Gene Siskel gave it a "two thumbs down" rating on their TV show At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, described the film's special effects as "ugly, aggressive" and "proliferating", saying that "trying to keep interested in [the special effects] was like trying to remain interested in a loudmouth shouting in [his] ear". Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle stated that "instead of moving the horror genre in new directions, The Frighteners simply falls apart from its barrage of visual effects and the overmixed onslaught of Danny Elfman's music score". The Austin Chronicles Joey O'Brien, said that although the screenplay was "practically loaded with wild ideas, knowingly campy dialogue and offbeat characterizations", it "switched gears" too fast and too frequently that "the audience is left struggling to catch up as [The Frighteners] twists and turns its way unmercifully towards a literally out-of-its-words finale".
At the 23rd Saturn Awards, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films honored Jackson with nominations for Best Direction and Best Writing, the latter he shared with wife Fran Walsh. The Frighteners also was nominated the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film, and for its Special Effects, Make-up (Rick Baker) and Music (Danny Elfman). Michael J. Fox and Jeffrey Combs were also nominated for their work.
;Further reading
Category:1996 films Category:1990s comedy films Category:1990s horror films Category:American black comedy films Category:American comedy horror films Category:New Zealand films Category:English-language films Category:Films directed by Peter Jackson Category:Bangsian fantasy Category:Films set in the 1960s Category:Ghost films Category:Supernatural horror films Category:WingNut Films productions Category:Universal Pictures films
bg:Сянката на смъртта de:The Frighteners es:The Frighteners fr:Fantômes contre fantômes id:The Frighteners it:Sospesi nel tempo ja:さまよう魂たち pl:Przerażacze pt:The Frighteners ru:Страшилы fi:Kummituskopla sv:The Frighteners ta:த ஃபிரைட்னெர்ஸ் tr:Sevimli Hayaletler zh:恐怖幽灵This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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