FILM FOCUS: WHEN GOOD GHOULS GO BAD

The Fox Family made-for-TV movie When Good Ghouls Go Bad has long been on my “To Watch” list for many reasons.  It’s based on a book by R.L. Stine, the 90s horror maestro.  It stars Christopher Lloyd, of Back to the Future and Clue fame.  And, judging by the few snippets I was able to view online, it’s brimming with Halloween cheer.  Despite my desire to see it, it’s been a long wait.  It’s available for sale on DVD but I wanted to watch it at least once before adding it to my permanent collection, and it apparently never airs on TV anymore.  Luckily some kind soul put the whole thing up on YouTube and it was my first movie pick of the 2015 Halloween season.

I’m happy to report that it didn’t disappoint!  It never reaches the brilliance of Hocus Pocus (nothing does, but both movies both have “death by school kiln” scenes) or even the campy fun of Halloweentown, but it hit all of the holiday sweet spots.  The plot gets complicated, but I’ll do my best to keep recap it quickly: tween Danny and his dad move back to the small town that’s home to both Danny’s grandfather and the ailing family chocolate factory.  While Danny’s dad ignores him while trying to save the family business, Danny bonds with his fun-loving grandpa (played by Christopher Lloyd), who insists that everyone, even Danny, call him Uncle Fred.

Danny soon learns that Halloween is forbidden in the town due to an incident years earlier involving a Goth kid who was accidentally killed in the school kiln and threatened revenge if the holiday is ever celebrated.  The local football coach and his bully son fanatically enforce the rules, but a series of bizarre events quickly upsets the status quo.  In short order Uncle Fred is killed when a mysterious pile of pumpkins falls on him, then comes back as a friendly zombie to help Danny uncover why Halloween decorations keep appearing all over town.  Danny, his local girl love interest, and zombie Uncle Fred soon run afoul of a host of zombies and angry townspeople and uncover a conspiracy about the real events surrounding the infamous Curtis Danko’s death.

That’s about as concise as I can manage, and I’m leaving out a lot, including weird subplots about German investors, Danny’s dad’s own love interest, magical fireflies, a secret haunted house run by the local kids, an evil statue, and the list goes on and on.  The story isn’t the movie’s greatest strength, but it somehow all makes sense in the end.

Christopher Lloyd can bring gravitas to any situation or dialogue and he anchors the whole thing with a sense of fun.  There are a lot of interesting supporting characters, like Danny’s dad’s kooky secretary, the bully’s mom, and the befuddled mayor and his wife.  At first I was confused by Danny’s love interest, Dayna.  I thought maybe her dialogue was all dubbed, because something was definitely off every time she spoke.  A little internet research revealed that the actress is Australian, and she did a bad job trying to disguise her accent.  The result is a very weird, very distracting cadence.  The movie itself, set in small-town middle America, was shot in Australia but if there were other covert Aussies actors in the cast they did a much better job of keeping their accents at bay.

The Halloween visuals are plentiful.  One of the plot points is that elaborate Halloween decorations keep mysteriously appearing throughout the town, so there lots of shots of lavish holiday décor.  The kids also have the aforementioned secret haunted house, to which they smuggled all of the town’s banned Halloween stuff.  An orange Volkswagen bug even gets done-up as a jack-o-lantern and a very cool cemetery makes repeat appearances. 

What I wasn’t expecting were a few surprisingly profound moments thrown in amid the silliness.  The first such moment occurs when Danny speaks to Dayna after his grandfather’s funeral.  She delivers a beautiful monologue on how the idea of him decomposing in his grave is actually a beautiful thing, a return to the earth, and so on.  (It sounds better when delivered in her weird Aussie-US warble.)  The ending of the movie is also surprisingly moving, with the assembled zombies engaging in a beautiful danse macabre in the graveyard, slowly swirling into dust and clouds. 

Reading up on the movie afterward revealed a real-life tragedy linked to it.  The actor who played Danny went missing in 2006 at the age of 18.  He’s never been found after leaving a poker game with friends.  It definitely casts a pall over the proceedings,  knowing the grim fate of its child star, but as I said the movie actually has a surprisingly deep and nuanced view of death that you wouldn’t expect from a made-for-TV Halloween movie aimed at kids.  Perhaps it's due to the tragic circumstances of its star that When Good Ghouls Go Bad isn’t in heavy rotation every Halloween, but it has a lot going for it and is definitely worth seeking out.