Ghost Chase (1987)

Director: Roland Emmerich

Screenplay: Roland Emmerich and Thomas Kubisch

Cast: Jason Lively as Warren McCloud; Tim McDaniel as Fred; Jill Whitlow as Laurie Sanders; Leonard Lansink as Karl; Paul Gleason as Stan Gordon; Ian MacNaughton as Frederick McCloud; Chuck Mitchell as Mr. Rosenbaum

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

Yes, I am covering a Roland Emmerich movie, which is bizarre even for me to consider. But Emmerich long before his big budget films had to begin somewhere. His first known film is arguably Universal Soldier (1992) as it had Jean-Claude Van Damme in his popular Hollywood years and led to sequels off the back of financial success. I hold some good to that film, entirely for a scene of Dolph Lundgren as a Vietnam soldier, brought back to life,and having gone insane, holding a supermarket hostage and beginning a crazed monologue about the war whilst a colleague, also a resurrected soldier, is eating frozen meat. Stargate (1994) was after, though I'd argue that whilst it is an important step in his career, the TV series has subsumed it culturally just for being over ten seasons without the spin-offs. After that was Independence Day (1996) which was a smash hit, starting Emmerich's course to blockbusters to the modern day.

Before then, he started with West German/American co-productions, such as a Malcolm McDowell starring sci-fi Moon 44 (1990), or this, which looked like a horror themed E.T. rip off but is Roland Emmerich making an eighties horror tinged comedy with cast members from the cult film Night of the Creeps (1986). Nothing is inappropriate in the film for a family audience baring  the surprising amount of swearing, an affinity for "Goddamn" in particular and an occasional "shit", all about two horror loving guys Warren (Jason Lively) and Fred (Tim McDaniel)  alongside the put upon female lead to their amateur horror films Laurie (Jill Whitlow). The E.T. stand in, in lieu to Steven Spielberg's famous 1982 about a diminutive alien being a huge mega hit, is here the ghost of a diminutive English butler of one of the guy's late grandfather, acquired when Warren is the benefactor of a will. Said butler Lewis wishes his body to finally rest, taking advantage of Fred being a wunderkind with film practical effects by hijacking an animatronic version of himself as a corporal body, which in fair due to the film itself is a very well made puppet creation who never comes off as unintentionally creepy with his big eyes and stereotypical English accent.

Ghost Chase is just an okay film, but I must confess this is a Roland Emmerich film I have seen that I have enjoyed. Unfortunately the German born director became a pretentious one, bombastic and yet bland, who puts messages about climate change in films like The Day After Tomorrow (2004) only for there to still be the problematic nature I have always had with disaster films of them gleefully killing off whole populations as statistics in elaborate catastrophes. His cinema does not appeal to me at all, but not without a concern that he simply followed spectacle without risk and with pseudo gravity to the material.  Ghost Chase, co-written by Emmerich, is a simple and silly tale where two goofball male leads and female character being the grounded one cross paths with an evil movie mogul who wants the inheritance too.

I like the tributes to horror throughout the film, as they fell from a sincere place and not stumbling into anything that would be ridiculed. One of the leads Fred is the aforementioned talented director/tech head jack of all trades who has turned their home into a giant haunted house, even creating a breakfast preparation system which the creators of Wallace and Gromit would be proud of. When you get an actual haunted house, it has all the clichés like superimposed actors as ghosts, sentient suits of armour and a giant spiked crushing device, all done with a loving sense of playfulness that is not to be found in later films from the director I have seen. Even the fact they take advantage of Night of the Living Dead (1968) being in the public domain is for good, such as splicing it in-between a meta slasher opening inside the film, starting as being part of the trend of the films in the eighties only for it to be a production being shot the leads in their house.

Lewis himself is interesting the main selling point of this entire production, one of the many miniature beings who exist in the eighties, many of which were as mentioned in the shadow of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial being such a big blockbuster hit. Not annoying in the slightest, there is an added side to this being a film by German born Emmerich in which one of the villains is an incompetent German henchman who looks like a glasses wearing middle aged man, felt with a wink. Lewis even evokes fighting the "Hun" in World War I in one set piece against him, which does not feel offensive when you consider this is a German production that is probably taking glee in all this.

Beyond this, it is a predictable movie. As a depiction of Los Angeles in the eighties however, shot in Hollywood, it is interesting to see Emmerich's take on Hollywoodland before he would be a permanent member, even if his shots show it as a crowded urban sprawling epicentre more than its glamorous facade may suggest. The story plays up to this place's inherent oddness, where turn of the century houses hide knee-deep between studios and undistinguished buildings, and where it subverts the stereotype of the drunk doing a double take at a strange sight by revealing a drunk homeless man as a former star, offering Lewis information for a very important location he needs to get to off camera.

The irony is not lost of Roland Emmerich eventually becoming a big Hollywood director  considering how much of the film is about the leads, especially Fred, wanting to get their as creators. He should be happy he got his dream, the one Fred wants whilst Warren is in love with his off-and-on again female lead, almost suggesting the Fred character is a take on himself as a wide eyed wannabe director with so many ideas in his head. It is annoying that this dream however includes a film like 2012 (2009) in the reality, a bloated and unsubtle experience for anyone. This admittedly could come off as extreme mean to write, and anyone wanting to defend that film is welcome to try to me, but a person's life is long enough for him or her to change over the years into an entirely different person. It would be interesting to see how the helmer of Ghost Chase ended up being the man he did in the later decades. One possible issue is that, whilst I may maintain an open mind to his work, not a lot of Emmerich's work is exactly appropriate to cover for this type of review, which not even his greatest defenders would argue against. Possibly one exception is Anonymous (2011), his ill advised period film suggesting William Shakespeare did not write his own plays. In comparison, something as innocuous but joyful like Ghost Chase comes off as more charming.