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| "The Great Scott" (Anthony Quinn) won't allow a little thing like death to get between him and his trophy wife (Bo Derek). |
Release Date: Oct. 17, 1989 (home video); June 1, 1990 (theatrical). Running Time: 90 minutes. Screenplay: John Derek. Producer: Bo Derek, Chandran Rutnam. Director: John Derek.
THE PLOT:
Katie (Bo Derek) is married to the much older Scott (Anthony Quinn) - aka, "The Great Scott" - who made his fortune by creating a Business Empire doing Business. One day, while horse riding, Scott collapses from a heart attack. He survives, but his activities are now greatly restricted. After he discovers that he can no longer enjoy intimacy with his young wife, he declares that "real men don't eat quiche," and decides to take The Man's Way Out (TM)... but since there are no live grizzlies on hand for him to wrestle, he settles for just shooting himself in the head, considerately making sure that Katie will be the one to discover the mess.
So Katie must now get on with her own life and learn to live without... Oh, who am I kidding? Scott almost instantly comes back as a ghost, with Katie the only one who can see or hear him. But, as a frustrated Katie points out, "ghosts can't do it!" So Scott hatches a plan. They will pick out a man with a suitable body; then Katie will murder him so that Scott can possess his corpse, allowing them to live happily ever after.
It's like the original Hellraiser, only with Frank and Julia as the heroes and done as a romantic comedy!
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| Katie reviews Important Business Documents. You can tell she's serious because she's wearing glasses! |
CHARACTERS:
Katie: I think Bo Derek's acting is actually worse here than in Bolero, with many of her line deliveries sounding almost as if she's sight reading them. The writing doesn't exactly help. Her reaction to Scott's plan to have her commit murder? "That's kinky stuff. We've never been kinky!" With that being her first reaction to a request to commit murder, it's hardly surprising that it takes less than a minute's wheedling before she agrees to everything. Oh, and she openly talks to Scott in front of others, not even attempting to hide that she's seeing the ghost of her ex-husband. You'd think her Business Rivals in a bizarre subplot would use that to have her declared incompetent, but no one who observes her ever treats her conversations with a dead man as anything other than an amusing quirk.
Scott: Anthony Quinn was a screen legend... but he was never averse to lending his name to junk, so much so that I'm not even certain this represents his worst film. I am confident, however, that this is his worst performance. His "ghost Scott" is dreadful. He laughs and chortles almost constantly, and bellows most of his dialogue. A big problem is that he doesn't get to interact with anyone. Likely to maximize Quinn's footage on a short schedule, John Derek shoots all of his ghost scenes against a black background, with an added distortion effect, intercutting Katie with Scott. It doesn't work, and with no actors to act and react to, Quinn is left at sea.
Fausto: Leo Damian makes his screen debut and finale as Fausto, a young man who sets his sights on Katie after he sees her sunbathing naked on a beach. He's a young man, younger even than Katie, which initially rouses Scott's jealousy. Once he hatches his murder/possession plan, though, Scott decides there might be some advantages to youth. Damian's performance is quite bad, and he has no screen presence at all, making it easy to see why this was his only film role.
Winston: Don Murray gives the only reasonably decent performance in the film. Winston is a business associate of Scott's who has long been friendly with the couple, and who becomes romantically interested in Katie. There isn't much to say about the character, but at least there is one actor in the movie who isn't actively painful to watch.
Angel: I can't say the same about Julie Newmar. She appears as the angel who comes to guide Scott... at least, I think that's what she's supposed to be doing, but she's in the movie too briefly for even that. Newmar only gets a couple of lines, but she goes whole ham on them. When she informs Scott that he's her first case, she stretches out the words portentously. So portentously that I strongly suspect that she recognized how bad this project was and decided to send it up. Oh, and if you're wondering? Scott being Angel's first case never comes to anything, and it's well over thirty minutes before we even see her again after she mentions this.
Donald Trump: Before the White House... before The Apprentice... before he even gave a kid directions outside a hotel... this was Donald Trump's feature film debut. He was already a famous/infamous figure, which is doubtless why the Razzies awarded him "Worst Supporting Actor." I'm very, very far from a Trump fan and I'm not about to call his performance "good" - but honestly, he isn't even the worst actor in his scenes, and his line readings are clearly better than Leo Damian's. Given how dire the overall movie is, if anything I'd say he probably helps it more than he hurts it.
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| "And Yes, That Really Was Donald Trump." And yes, that really is how he’s billed. |
"SAY SOMETHING NICE":
John Derek wasn't much of a director, and he was even less of a writer. But as a filmmaker, he did have one strength, clearly visible in 1984's Bolero and again here: He knew how to get a well-framed, visually eye-catching shot. The budget for Ghosts Can't Do It is not on record, but the small scale and cast of mostly "B"-tier actors indicates that it was probably pretty low. Nevertheless, Derek still delivers a handful of arresting visuals. I'm left wondering if, after he decided to quit acting, he shouldn't have tried his hand as a cinematographer instead of a director.
SO... WHAT WERE THEY ON?
Midway through the film, the main plot disappears for the sake of an entirely unrelated subplot in which Katie has to save Scott's business interests from other business moguls. I think she's meant to be fighting back a hostile takeover, as I have a hard time believing that Donald Trump is on Scott's company's board of directors.
After she proves more poised than expected at the first meeting, at least some of the Evil Businessmen resort to a new tactic: Hiring a thug billed as "The Pill Man" (Mickey Knox) to intercept her in the swimming pool and force her to take sleeping pills at gunpoint. Katie puts the pills in her mouth and then flips the man into the pool, at which point he splutters that he'll make her take them "as a suppository!" John Derek must have been particularly enamored of the line, as Pill Man repeats it a couple of times during the scene.
Despite getting away, Katie must have accidentally swallowed the pills during the scuffle, though there's no clear sequence of shots to indicate such. We cut directly from Pill Man being all wet to Katie in bed, with her rear end stuck in the air (suppressing... comments...), as Ghost Scott urges her to fight off the effects and get to the meeting. This must somehow work, as we cut forward again to Katie meeting with Donald Trump, who is impressed that she "won." Offscreen.
Between the jagged editing, the horrible dialogue, and the entire Pill Man scene, this sequence is so offputtingly bizarre that it could almost qualify as surrealism. One moment doesn't flow in any way into the next, and the connection between scenes requires the audience to fill in gaps in order to create an even semi-coherent narrative. It plays for all the world like the production ran out of money with critical scenes unfilmed - and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if that was exactly what happened!
Oh, and none of this activity is in any way related to the actual main plot of the movie, nor does it ever get mentioned again. It's all just... there.
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| Katie wants Fausto's body - possibly not in the way he'd prefer... |
OTHER MUSINGS:
Ghosts Can't Do It is, if anything, even more inept than John & Bo Derek's previous Razzie winner, 1984's utterly dreadful Bolero. As with Bolero, it presents as heroic characters who are self-entitled and unlikable. This film is even worse in that regard, as the main characters actively plot to commit murder for the sake of their own pleasure.
I suppose this could work if done as a black comedy, with the characters intended to be seen as despicable. But no. It's clear that we're meant to sympathize, like, and root for Scott and Katie. This means that even before the film begins, it's already failed on the concept level... and that's before factoring in the utterly inept execution.
The movie begins with "The Great Scott" having his heart attack. This happens less than a minute after the credits end, and starting here is the first of the film's many misjudgments. For the story to work at all, we need to believe that Scott (70 year old Anthony Quinn) and Katie (34 year old Bo Derek) are desperately in love, which means the film should show their relationship as it was before the heart attack. Not doing so isn't even a matter of budget, as there's close to 15 minutes of wheel-spinning between Scott's heart attack and suicide; had even five of those minutes been spent selling this mismatched pair as a couple, it might have been possible for viewers to be at least slightly invested in their happiness.
The single biggest problem, however, is the handling of "ghost Scott." Almost every movie involving a ghost has the ghost on set with the other characters, with those characters simply not reacting. Even acknowledging that the decision to shoot Anthony Quinn against a black background was budget-oriented, it was the wrong choice. Had writer/director John Derek just shot what could fit into Quinn's schedule (trimming some of the post-heart attack scenes might have helped with this), the results would have been better. Yes, it would have resulted in less screen time for Quinn. But the tradeoff would have been a better performance, since he would actually be playing off other people... and his absence from some of the film might even have allowed Katie to emerge as a character in her own right.
But all of that would have required competence and careful planning, precious little of which is on display anywhere within this movie.
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| Anthony Quinn on vacation... er, Scott contemplating his dilemma. |
THE OTHER NOMINEES:
Ghosts Can't Do It was the Golden Raspberry Awards' second tie, with this movie sharing the "honor" with the Andrew Dice Clay vehicle, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. Though I doubt I'll enjoy Ford Fairlane, I'll be quite surprised if it manages to be anywhere near as bad as this!
The other nominees were: The Bonfire of the Vanities, director Brian DePalma's botched adaptation of Tom Wolfe's bestseller; Graffiti Bridge, Prince's attempt to relaunch his movie career with a sequel to Purple Rain; and Rocky V, Sylvester Stallone's misjudged effort to return that series to its roots.
I haven't seen Graffiti Bridge; I suspect it's bad, but probably not painfully so. Bonfire of the Vanities, while mostly tedious, is sufficiently well shot and acted that I suspect it was included more for being a disappointment than for actually being terrible. I can offer no defense for Rocky V, however. Though it tries to be more "grounded" than its immediate predecessor, its story as presented is just as implausible, only minus the sense of fun. And it's still nowhere near as bad as Ghosts Can't Do It!
Of the nominees, I find it almost certain that Ghosts Can't Do It deserved the "Worst Picture" nod. John Derek had some talent as an actor, once upon a time, and he likely could have squeaked by as a movie producer - but as a writer and director, he made Ed Wood look like Orson Welles.
OVERALL:
Ghost Can't Do It is inept on almost every level, with jagged edits, terrible performances, and unlikable characters. You'd think it would at least be easy enough to sit through at a mere 90 minutes - but that running time is deceptive, as each minute seems to stretch out ever longer, until what was passed off as a movie emerges instead as a purgatory.
All told, it's as bad a movie as I've seen... and I've sat through a decade's worth of bad movies to get to it!
Rating: Flushable Wipe (Used).
Joint Worst Picture Winner with The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.
Worst Picture - 1989: Star Trek V - The Final Frontier
Worst Picture - 1991: Hudson Hawk
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