A Charles Band production that went straight to video, I fully expected horror-Western Ghost Town to be dreadful cornball B-movie nonsense, but it's actually a pretty decent film, with competent direction from novice Richard McCarthy (surprisingly, his only film), a smart script by David Schmoeller (director of Tourist Trap and Puppet Master), and better than average make-up effects from John Carl Buechler (Hatchet). However, the ace up its sleeve is definitely Mac Ahlberg's stunning cinematography, which ensures that the film is always a visual treat, even during the rather-too-slow build up.
The film opens with a young woman, Kate (Catherine Hickland), being abducted by a mysterious figure in black. Arizona cop Langley (Franc Luz) is soon hot on her trail, tracking her down to an old ghost town in the middle of the desert. Langley wanders around the deserted town, occasionally glimpsing ghostly people, for a touch longer than is really necessary for the sake of the plot, but Ahlberg's excellent atmospheric imagery is there to compensate.
The pace gradually picks up once the cop starts to interact with the spooks that haunt the place: a blind fortune teller (Bruce Glover), a blacksmith (Zitto Kazann), beautiful young woman Etta (Laura Schaefer), brassy barmaid Grace (Penelope Windust), and the villain of the piece, outlaw Devlin (Jimmie F. Skaggs), who years ago killed the town's sheriff as the rest of the inhabitants looked on, afraid to help. Subsequently slaughtered by Devlin and his henchmen, the townsfolk are now lost souls, trapped between heaven and hell, tortured by the spirits of their murderers. There's bloody shootouts, some ghostly sex, a handful of grisly murders (although technically not, since they're already dead), a couple of explosions, and a final showdown in which Langley finds a novel use for a sheriff's badge.
It's not a stone-cold classic, but it's certainly one of the better films that Charles Band's Empire Pictures churned out in the '80s.
The film opens with a young woman, Kate (Catherine Hickland), being abducted by a mysterious figure in black. Arizona cop Langley (Franc Luz) is soon hot on her trail, tracking her down to an old ghost town in the middle of the desert. Langley wanders around the deserted town, occasionally glimpsing ghostly people, for a touch longer than is really necessary for the sake of the plot, but Ahlberg's excellent atmospheric imagery is there to compensate.
The pace gradually picks up once the cop starts to interact with the spooks that haunt the place: a blind fortune teller (Bruce Glover), a blacksmith (Zitto Kazann), beautiful young woman Etta (Laura Schaefer), brassy barmaid Grace (Penelope Windust), and the villain of the piece, outlaw Devlin (Jimmie F. Skaggs), who years ago killed the town's sheriff as the rest of the inhabitants looked on, afraid to help. Subsequently slaughtered by Devlin and his henchmen, the townsfolk are now lost souls, trapped between heaven and hell, tortured by the spirits of their murderers. There's bloody shootouts, some ghostly sex, a handful of grisly murders (although technically not, since they're already dead), a couple of explosions, and a final showdown in which Langley finds a novel use for a sheriff's badge.
It's not a stone-cold classic, but it's certainly one of the better films that Charles Band's Empire Pictures churned out in the '80s.