The Frighteners

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Movie
German title The Frighteners
Original title The Frighteners
Country of production New Zealand , USA
original language English
Publishing year 1996
length Theatrical version: 110 minutes
Director’s Cut : 123 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Peter Jackson
script Peter Jackson
Fran Walsh
production Peter Jackson
Jamie Selkirk
Robert Zemeckis
music Danny Elfman
camera John Blick
Alun Bollinger
cut Jamie Selkirk
occupation

The Frighteners (alternatively The Frighteners - Lord of the Spirits ) is a horror film from 1996. The director of the film was Peter Jackson . The main role was played by Michael J. Fox . The film takes place in the imaginary town of Fairwater, California .

action

Frank Bannister lost his wife in a car accident. However, he also received a gift in this accident, because suddenly he can see ghosts and talk to them. As a self-proclaimed ghost hunter , he takes advantage of this. Together with an oblique spirits trio consisting of the Judge ( English "judges"), a Revolverhelden and former Richter; he pulls the money out of the pockets of good faith people from Cyrus, who died in the 1970s, and the academic Stuart.

The crooked business of this ghost hunter agency is thwarted by the press. The Grim Reaper himself also joins the story and so Bannister goes from hunter to hunted. For example, he had trouble with his last client, Ray Lynskey, Lucy Lynskey's husband. After Frank was expelled by Ray, he died the next day. It's not the first time that Frank has been suspected of murder. He was even suspected of murdering his own wife.

However, the widowed doctor Lucy Lynskey now also takes Bannister's side to help him out of this mess. She believes there is a link between the deaths and a patient named Patricia Ann Bradley. More than twenty years ago, a male nurse named Johnny Bartlett shot and killed twelve people in the hospital with a rifle and is said to have been supported by Patricia, then fifteen, who was in love with him. Bartlett was sentenced to death for murder and was executed on the electric chair . Patricia ended up in a mental hospital from which she was released fifteen years later. Her own mother then kept her at home.

Frank now not only has to prove his innocence, but also prevent further murders by the Grim Reaper. It quickly becomes clear to him that as a living person he does not have the opportunity to fight the Grim Reaper, so he comes up with a dangerous plan: He wants to pass out of life for a short time in order to face the Grim Reaper as a ghost. His plan succeeds, he cannot destroy the Grim Reaper, but now he knows his identity: it is the ghost of the executed Johnny Bartlett who continues his series of murders. Frank, who is now among the living again, now knows how to fight Bartlett. He puts him and his lover Patricia for the decisive fight where it all began: In the abandoned hospital where Bartlett committed his first murders. Only in this way can he prove his innocence and regain his inner peace.

Reviews

On the Rotten Tomatoes film website , the film achieved an audience rating of 71 percent.

"A tough, half-baked and also illogical horror comedy that only entertains for a few moments, otherwise confuses pun with satirical irony and sacrifices fantasy, lightness and carefreeness to the many compromises."

- Lexicon of international film

"In his Hollywood debut, which he shot at home in New Zealand, Jackson refrains from bloodbaths and sets off a firework of grotesque humor and horror tricks."

- TV Today

Awards

At the Saturn Awards in 1997, the film received a total of eight nominations, but did not win any prize in the end. It won the Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya award for special effects and was nominated for the same award in the Best Film category.

background

The story was initially planned as an episode of the TV series Tales from the Crypt , but producer Zemeckis found the script so good that he wanted to produce his own film from it. It was his last major role for Michael J. Fox, after which he retired from the film business because of Parkinson's disease .

The naming of the Lynskey family is based on the real name of the actress Melanie Lynskey , who played one of the leading roles in Peter Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures .

R. Lee Ermey appears in the cemetery as the ghost of a US Army sergeant. Ermey is best known for the role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the film Full Metal Jacket , to which his appearance in The Frighteners is closely based.

Director's Cut

At the beginning of December 2005 the Director's Cut of The Frighteners was released in English on DVD in Germany . The version named Director's Fun Cut by Peter Jackson is around twelve minutes longer than the cinema version. The Director's Cut mainly contains a few more funny scenes and although no violent scenes were cut out, it received an FSK -16 rating in contrast to the theatrical version, which was released from the age of 18. In July 2018, the theatrical version was also released from the age of 16 after another check by the FSK.

An extended scene in the Director's Cut shows director Peter Jackson in a cameo in which he disguised as punk shows Bannister the middle finger. Jackson had originally cut this scene because he saw his performance as too self-indulgent.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Approval for The Frighteners . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , November 2005 (PDF; test number: 78 540 V / DVD / UMD).
  2. ↑ The Frighteners at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
  3. ↑ The Frighteners. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ The Frighteners on tvtoday.de
  5. ↑ Nominations and awards on imdb.com
  6. ↑ https://www.schnittberichte.com/ticker.php?ID=5368