Tally Rally

Remember, a while ago I said that we got a broken disc? Well, we eventually got the replacement: Ghost Story (1981). 

It starts in a quaint old Vermont town with four old men telling ghost stories. The men are John Houseman, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Melvyn Douglas, and Fred Astaire - the Chowder Society. In New York, meanwhile, a young man gets out of the shower, finds that the girl in his bed has turned into a corpse, and falls through a window to his death. Next we meet his brother (both are played by Craig Wasson) on a bus, going home to the his hometown, and his father Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Wasson is a bit scruffy for his stuffy father and their friends. He has been teaching at a small college in Florida, where he met woman, Alice Krige. Their whirlwind affair is shown in extended flashback. It lasted until she left him - for his more successful but now deceased brother. But Wasson is beginning to suspect his brother did not commit suicide, and that Krige was involved. And evidence is pointing to something supernatural in the past.

There are a few more deaths and we are introduced to a pair of scruffy escapees from a mental institution who prophesize and act vaguely threatening. And eventually we get another extended flashback about the Chowder Society in their youth, and the woman they courted, also Alice Krige.

I thought the atmosphere was good, the ghost story was good, but the structure wasn't great. The flashbacks were a bit distracting, and also a bit too pat. It was great to see the four old classic actors, but I can't say they were outstanding. Only Astaire stood out. He played the frivolous one, the fellow who wasn't all that sharp, who got ahead in life based on social position, and never had the talent or nerve to try anything else.

But my favorite part was probably the end of the bus trip - Wasson got off in White River Junction, near where I went to school. The bus stops at the Tally House, an all-night diner where students could go while studying all night. I never went on a "Tally rally" myself, but remember them fondly.