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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Sunday, May 19, 2019

The Ghost (1963)

Starring Barbara Steele, Peter Baldwin, Elio Jotta, Harriet Medin, Carol Bennet
Directed by Riccardo Freda
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

While a scientist is being treated for his paralysis, his wife has an affair with his doctor and convinces him to kill the scientist, but they're both haunted by his apparent ghost afterward.

We have here an interesting psychological thriller from Italian director Freda, although curiously set in Scotland, fronted by gothic horror star Barbara Steele.  Freda and his cameraman Raffaele Masciocchi exquisitely frame Steele's face and eyes in closeups to great effect and the screenplay makes clever use of the ghost's appearances.  Sometimes objects move on their own, sometimes we see manifestations of the scientist's decaying body, and sometimes he communicates to Steele and Baldwin in his own voice through his mansion's maid who is also a medium.  There are also twists and turns as the lovers find their future plans not as easy to achieve at first thought.  Film historian Troy Howarth pointed out to me that despite the return of actors from Steele's and Freda's The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, as well as the use of the surname Hitchcock in this film, it's not related to the earlier picture, but it's certainly worthy of standing on its own merits, which are many.

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