Cloaked Critic Reviews Ghost Fever

!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Here's a little known spooky movie oddity starring Sherman Hemsley and Luis Avalos...for those of you too young to know who those men are, look 'em up. They're comedians from the old days when comedians actually knew how to be funny.

"Ghost Fever" was released back in 1986, but despite being released after the 1984 film, "Ghostbusters" the special effects were more akin to 1970's standards. In fact, when I first watched this movie I swore it was from the 70's, and was surprised when I looked it up and realized it came out in the late 80's. However the campy appearance of the film does work toward the overall tone of the movie, as this is a screwball comedy starring two screwy comedians from the days of good ol' fashion slapstick. In fact, the film seems to follow in the big floppy clown footsteps of older comedy features like "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein", "Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy", "The Comedy of Terrors", and Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein". The movie's hilarious hijinks also remind me of comedy-horror films made during the same time period like "Haunted Honeymoon", "Bloodbath at the House of Death", and "Transylvania Twist".

It's a comedy duo movie with a ghostly twist. To sum the story up short and sweet, Sherman and Luis play two police officers who are sent on a routine assignment to deliver an eviction notice to an old haunted plantation, but everything goes downhill when the two men become trapped in the spooky old estate with an angry bigoted ghost who's looking to put them both 6-feet under.

All in all, I mostly liked this movie as it was pretty damn funny, and I loved how Sherman Hemsley played two different characters in the movie, but I will confess that it does start to get kind of stupid toward the end. The part I thought was really dumb was when the ghost turns into a vampire and is apparently running some shady operation in the basement with mad scientists creating zombies. I personally felt that was a major silver bullet to the story's plot. Other than that it's a pretty alright film, and one I love to come back to for the good humor it delivers. I also love the surprisingly ironic twist at the end.