The Frighteners
by Peter Jackson
List Price:
Our Price: $6.08
You Save: $6.90 (53%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.01 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Jeffrey Combs, John Astin, Michael J. Fox, Peter Dobson, Trini AlvaradoDirector: Peter Jackson
Brand: Universal
Producer: Peter Jackson
Writer: Peter Jackson
Producer: Fran Walsh
Writer: Fran Walsh
Producer: Jamie Selkirk
Producer: Robert Zemeckis
Producer: Tim Sanders
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
Published: 1998-08-01
DVD Release Date: 1998-08-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Pictures
DVD Reviews of The Frighteners
DVD Review: I do, I do, I DO believe in Spooks!
Summary: 4 Stars
Less of a feature film than an audition reel of what New Zealand wunderkind director Peter Jackson could do with a decent budget, "The Frighteners" is a jauntily paced little spookshow with Michael J. Fox in the lead as a paranormal researcher, exorcist, entrepreneur, and great chum to ghosts, who runs a lucrative little enterprise as an "exorcist" who evicts the very poltergeists who serve as his friends and houseguests. Sheesh, to think what the Ghostbusters might have done had they cut those ectoplasmic pests in on a piece of the action.
Let's be honest here. As much as I adore and savor the works of Peter Jackson---particularly "Dead/Alive" and "Bad Taste", low-budget splatter-flicks helmed well before he was a Hollywood maven and Tolkien-resurrecting powerhouse---"The Frighteners" is a sketchy, chaotic, massively flawed film that is all over the map.
That doesn't mean it's not fun.
Quite the contrary. "The Frighteners" is an inventive little romp into soul-stealing and besides, it has Jeffrey Combs as a feral, uber-paranoid, necromantic FBI agent, which alone makes it worth a rental. Michael J. Fox turns in a jolly performance as Frank Bannister, a con-artist who capitalizes on his winning relationships with a trio of accommodating spooks (including the great John Astin as "The Judge").
Producing poltergeists---and exorcisizing them---is big business until Bannister runs into the real thing, a Collector of Souls that eats ordinary ghosts for breakfast and throws his ordinarily profitable existence into turmoil. It seems mass murdering grinning-until-the-end asylum guard Johnny Bartlett (a fine turn by Jake Busey) died a miserable death in a mass murder spree, and somehow all of this ties into a ghoulish spectre that sucks the life out of hapless mortals.
Add in an inspired performance by Jeffrey Combs as a paranormal and exceptionally sensitive FBI agent ("What? Ah-ha, now you're trying to stop *my* heart!"), and some genuinely startling special effects, and you have a jolly mishmash of a horror movie that really doesn't know when to stop. That's part of its fevered charm, right to the the final confrontation, though Busey looks far more malefic when covered up in a shroud.
What will you get out of "The Frighteners"? First, this is a schizophrenic movie: Jackson shows off Wingnut's ability to deliver on a wide range of highly startling effects. Second, Jeffrey Combs steals the show, and right down to his final moments on Earth is a laconic, paranoid, inches-from-a-nervous-breakdown wreck of a paranormal investigator. I want to Believe!, indeed.
Let's be honest: "The Frighteners" won't change your life, won't scare you, won't threaten your brain with an aneurism brought on by too much spectral derring-do. But the effects are stellar, the acting is uniformly competent, and the plot, while muddled, is jolly fun.
Will it change your view of the universe and shift your political outlook? Absolutely not. Will it entertain for nearly two hours? Totally. Could you ask for more? Possibly, but for a special effects real that led Jackson from his uber-disturbing but underrated "Heavenly Creatures" to helming up "Lord of the Rings", let's not get picky.
Is "Frighteners" worth a look? Absolutely. Dust off your Ouija Board, repeat "I do, I do, I DO believe in spooks," sit back and relax, and get ready for some spectral, frantic, ectoplasmic goodness seasoned with some startling special effects and served up with a few perfunctory scares. Boo, even.
JSG
Description of The Frighteners
A seedy ghost-buster is the only person who can stop and evil spririt goes on a murderous rampage. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 09/18/2007 Starring: Michael J. Fox Trini Alvarado Run time: 110 minutes Rating: ROne movie lover's nightmare is another's raucous joyride, and this special effects-laden horror comedy is bound to split both camps right down the middle. (Or, as Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide puts it, "definitely not for all tastes but a wild time for those who get into it.") Michael J. Fox plays a psychic investigator who can actually see ghosts, and lives with a trio of undead spirits who scare people to promote Fox's ghost-busting business. In a town infamous for serial killings, a new series of deaths prompts Fox to induce his own out-of-body experience so he can battle death in a spirit-plagued netherworld where evil reigns supreme--or something like that. So much happens in this chaotic film that you might feel like you're watching several movies at once--a slasher pic, a supernatural thriller, and a black comedy all rolled into a nonstop showcase for grisly makeup and a dozen varieties of special effects. It's an odd but wildly inventive film from New Zealand director Peter Jackson, who earned critical acclaim for his previous film Heavenly Creatures and would later create the ingenious pseudo-documentary Forgotten Silver. --Jeff Shannon
One movie lover's nightmare is another's raucous joyride, and this special effects-laden horror comedy is bound to split both camps right down the middle. (Or, as Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide puts it, "definitely not for all tastes but a wild time for those who get into it.") Michael J. Fox plays a psychic investigator who can actually see ghosts, and lives with a trio of undead spirits who scare people to promote Fox's ghost-busting business. In a town infamous for serial killings, a new series of deaths prompts Fox to induce his own out-of-body experience so he can battle death in a spirit-plagued netherworld where evil reigns supreme--or something like that. So much happens in this chaotic film that you might feel like you're watching several movies at once--a slasher pic, a supernatural thriller, and a black comedy all rolled into a nonstop showcase for grisly makeup and a dozen varieties of special effects. It's an odd but wildly inventive film from New Zealand director Peter Jackson, who earned critical acclaim for his previous film Heavenly Creatures and would later create the ingenious pseudo-documentary Forgotten Silver. --Jeff Shannon
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
Wild Wild WestSMITH,WIL; Release date: 1999-11-30; DVD
Best price: $5.25
Price in other shops:
Thirteen GhostsWarner Brothers; Release date: 2002-04-02; DVD
Best price: $3.97
Price in other shops:
Army of DarknessUniversal Studios; Release date: 1998-08-19; DVD
Best price: $6.98
Price in other shops:
Michael J. Fox Comedy Favorites Collection (The Secret of My Success / The Hard Way / For Love or Money / Greedy)NBC Universal; Release date: 2007-05-15; DVD
Best price: $5.03
Price in other shops:
TremorsUniversal Studios; Release date: 1998-04-29; DVD
Best price: $4.70
Price in other shops:
The Evil DeadCAMPBELL,BRUCE; Release date: 2002-03-05; DVD
Best price: $7.32
Price in other shops:
King Kong - Extended Cut (Three-Disc Deluxe Edition)Deluxe; Release date: 2006-11-14; Published: 2006-11-01; DVD
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops:
Fright NightSony; Release date: 1999-09-07; DVD
Best price: $6.18
Price in other shops:
Mystery MenUniversal Studios; Release date: 2000-01-11; DVD
Best price: $2.39
Price in other shops:
Dead AliveLions Gate; Release date: 1998-09-09; DVD
Best price: $7.32
Price in other shops: