Spirit is Willing, The (1967)
1/2 (out of 4)
Extremely bad mixture of horror and laughs about a teenager (Barry Gordon) who moves with his parents (Sid Caesar, Vera Miles) to a New England house, which just happens to be haunted. The parents naturally don't believe their son that three spirits are there so he ends up getting accused of most the damage being done by the ghosts. I think most people came to know the name William Castle through films like THE TINGLER, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL or some of his other gimmick horror movies. Just by watching them you'd think he was a decent director but then you might want to venture out into some of the other genres that he touched and you'll see some pretty bad movies. What's so shocking to me is that Castle was a naturally charming guy that could be very funny during interviews. Just by watching him you'd think he would be a natural for comedy but that certainly wasn't the case because he made some truly bad ones in his career and this here is one of the worst. Just by watching this film you'd think that Castle just thought having two people scream at each other was something funny. The characters in this motion picture just come off so fake, so stupid and so downright idiotic that you can never take them serious nor can you believe any of the situations that they are in. There's an entire subplot dealing with the teenager being "distant" and "going through a bad spell" and most of these scenes have him screaming at the top of his lungs while his father will then scream at the top of his lungs. The son will come back louder. The father will then go louder. Mommy will jump in louder then the son gets louder. This is supposed to be funny? After sitting through this for a second you'll be wishing that all three fell into the acid pit that we saw in Castle's HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Things really aren't much better with the type of humor from the ghosts as the majority of the so-called "laughs" comes from them either throwing dishes, ruining the furniture or just closing doors. It's really shocking at how poorly done everything in this movie was. The direction was really bad, the screenplay horrid and the overall flow of things is just so sloppy and silly that you are almost shocked that a major studio (Paramount) was behind it. You also have to wonder if this film helped play a part in the studio decided to go with someone other than Castle for ROSEMARY'S BABY, which would be released the following year. Either way, Castle has some good movies out there but there's no denying his comedies are truly awful movies and this here might be the worst.
