Best movie of this year hands down!

Better Late Then Never

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The final 10-minutes or so amounts to a neat wrinkle I didn't see coming. Too bad the rest of the ghost film is so utterly pedestrian. On the eve of his wedding to Meg (Sanders), Tom (Carlson) is confronted in a remote lighthouse by former lover, Vi (Reding). Unwilling to give up prospects of marrying into wealth, Tom allows Vi to fall into the ocean below, refusing to help as she dangles from the tower. Now he's haunted by her ghost, even as he continues his wedding plans.In my view, the material really needs a visual stylist to complement the spooky premise. As is, Director Gordon films in flat, high-key style thereby undercutting the eerie premise. Add a ghost who resembles Marilyn Monroe at her softest, and I was anything but repelled or even unsettled. Unfortunately, the occasional apparitions are about as scary as over-exposed film, which the effect likely is. If the writers were reaching for some kind of ghostly novelty, they got it, but at the movie's expense. Cast against type, a 50-year old wholesome Carlson fails to show much needed shadow of his own, and as a jazz musician and swain of a 20- year old cutie, he's a stretch. What the film does have is beguiling little 10-year old Susan Gordon (the director's daughter) as Meg's sister. She manages to steal the film in unobtrusive fashion unlike many Hollywood moppets. Also, catch Joe Turkel as the jive talking boat captain, apparently on loan from Kubrick and his iconic role in The Shining (1980). Otherwise, the 75-minutes amounts to an all-too-real bust, bombshell ghost or no.

Extremely poor quality photography and a tinny sound make this barely watchable, saved by the content going on rather than what was going on with the technicians. The film really starts with a thud (literally) when a beautiful woman falls to her death with a shattering scream from a lighthouse and isn't helped by the man she's involved in an argument with. This sequence is ultra disturbing because you know this woman is terrified for an extended period of time and knows she's on the verge of an accidental death. She may not be murdered, but the man who could have saved her (Richard Carlson, a minor matinée idol from the late 30's/early 40's) seems thrilled by her sudden departure from his life. She doesn't leave him alone, however, and when he's suddenly engaged to another woman, she begins haunting him, although whether or not it is her ghost or just his conscience is never determined.There are some genuinely spooky moments here, and if you can get past the cheap look, you might find it thrilling. The special effects aren't extraordinary, although what they do use actually might bring shivers down your spine. This doomed young beauty's ghost is a frightening presence, and as her "visits" to Carlson continue, they get more and more threatening, setting up for a conclusion which proves to be both horrific and even slightly profound. The cast tries to do what they can to overshadow the weak camera work and poor sound equipment, but they seem a bit amateurish under the circumstances. Still, there's some genuine frights to be found here, and some of them might bring on a few nightmares of your own.

this wasn't the worst movie ever made, but for me it was shall we say not enough action or intrigue. the ghost touches very nice, and the death scene at the beginning of the movie was pretty cool,, as our main character looks to wed his fiancé he has one problem,, he needs to get rid of his wife,, well no more worries she falls off of the balcony f? rom the lighthouse,, only problem is now is that he is haunted by her,, body part, by body part.. the interesting part of the movie I thought is how the little girl finds out what our main character has done and I asked to keep a secret by the man, will she ? well you will just have to watch,, to think that our leading man is gonna trust a child with such a dark gruesome horrifying secret Is unimaginable to me.

***SPOILERS*** Just when things were starting to go great for jazz pianist Tom Stewart,Richard Carlson, all of a sudden an old flame of his pooped into Tom's life. The sexy voluptuous and always gets what she want's Vi Mason, Juli Reding. Vi had gotten the news from the local society page in the newspaper that her ex-boyfriend Tom is going to be hooked up or married to sweet and pretty Meg Hubbard,Lugene Sanders, and the hurt and feeling rejected Vi don't like that one bit! Sneaking onto the off shore island where the wedding between Tom & Meg is to take place Vi threatens to expos Tom's affair, even though at the time he wasn't even married, in the hot & steamy love letters he sent her and thus put a damper on the happy couples wedding ceremony.While having it out with Tom at the island's lighthouse Vi slips and fall through the railing to her death on the rocks below. Now free and able to marry Meg and pursue his career as a top flight jazz pianist Tom's conscious starts to take control of him. Not that he had anything to do with Vi's death, it was an accident, but what Tom seems to think it's Vi's ghost vindictive who's hunting him throughout the entire film! Not only that his fiancée Meg's kid sister Sandy, Susan Gordon, as well as the island caretaker the blind Mrs, Ellis, Lillian Adams, soon discover Tom's secret in Vi's disappearance, her body was never found,and that drives him psycho! And later when the boat captain who ferried Vi to the island Nick, Joe Turkel, start putting the squeeze on and blackmailing him Tom goes homicidal.It takes a while for Tom to realized that it's only him and no one else who's seeing things in the late Vi's head an hand as well as jewelry popping up all over the place and driving him nuts. But when little Sandy catches him murdering Nick at the lighthouse he really goes off the wall. ***SPOILERS*** Fearing life in prison or even worse the death penalty or gas chamber Tom decides to do little Sandy in, who in fact loves her future brother in law, the same way he did, or accidentally did, Vi in. fortunately for everyone involved, except Tom, things don't turn out the way Tom planned them to. By the time the film is over Tom is finally reunited with Vi, just as she had planned from the world beyond, for all eternity.