The Headless Ghost (1959)

After a kooky animated title sequence that got my hopes up way too high for The Headless Ghost (1959), alas, this Herman Cohen effort is another one of those American International pics that would've been better served if sprocket holes had been punched into the poster and mounted on the movie projector instead of the actual film it (mis)represented.

Nope. No giant rampaging ghost here threatening to fling his head at people fleeing the premises. Not even close as what we get is a mild comedy of manners ‘n’ errors with three students sneaking back into a castle / tourist trap to see if it's really haunted by a ghost searching for its missing head like the tour guide said.

We then watch as they poke into every nook and cranny, the very same nooks and crannies explored during the tour again, again, and find next to nothing again, again, even though those legends do eventually prove true.

There are some fairly decent FX gags, with the ghosts of the ex-lords of this keep jumping in and out of their portraits; and the climactic chase where the body of our cleaved patch of ectoplasm finally manages to chase down its errant dismembered noggin was pretty hysterical, if sadly, too brief.

In fact, this whole thing might've been salvaged with additional chaotic scenes of that merry chase inserted in-between the insufferable vignettes of those students blundering around, trying to find the pieces needed to reverse the curse.

Still, there is the ghost banquet scene where a captured slave girl dances the Funky Chicken for about ten minutes. Beyond that, in spite of it being a decent print in its original aspect ratio, and the fact that I can cross another old AIP flick off the to-watch-list, I'm kinda regretting the three dollars blown on the digital rental on this one.

Originally posted on November 6, 2015, on Facebook.

The Headless Ghost (1959) Merton Park Studios :: Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors :: American International Pictures (AIP) / EP: Herman Cohen / P: Jack Greenwood / D: Peter Graham Scott / W: Aben Kandel, Herman Cohen / C: John Wiles / E: Bernard Gribble / M:Gerard Schurmann / S: Richard Lyon, Liliane Sottane, David Rose, Clive Revill, Jack Allen, Carl Bernard, Josephine Blake