Way back on Memorial Day Weekend of this year, some three months, 17 lifetimes, and 1500 horrible news cycles ago, I came here to ponder just how depressing a movie-less summer movie season would be. Now we finally have our answer: extremely very depressing. Sure, drive-ins and other outdoor venues that were able to offer a socially distant moviegoing experience did brisk business...but the programming was usually limited to Back to the Future and other chestnuts from the Reagan administration. Thanks to streaming services we still got to enjoy Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island, but not in a meat locker-cold theater with 750 of our friends and neighbors and a $20 bucket of popcorn covered in butter-flavored topping on our laps. As of this writing, some theaters have finally begun to reopen, but visiting them remains a life or death proposition. Am I really going to risk my life to watch the latest Halloween jam this fall? You know...I just might have to! As the summer of 2020 slouches to a close, I thought we’d turn the page all the way back to the summer of 1990, since it’s turning 30 this year and all. At the outset of the ’90 summer movie season all of the trade magazines were predicting that the #1 box office champ would be Ghost.....DAD!...starring America’s favorite dad and convicted serial rapist and directed by (wait for it...wait for it) Academy Award winning icon Sidney Poitier! I’m just messing around--everyone thought Ghost Dad was going to suck and it did and no one went to see it. People were expecting big returns from Total Recall and Dick Tracy and Die Hard 2 and expecting nothing at all from the summer’s second ghost-related flick (third if you count Flatliners). The one from Airplane! co-director Jerry Zucker and starring Brat Pack expat Demi Moore and Roadhouse throat destroyer Patrick Swayze? Who the hell was gonna go see that?? Literally everyone, that’s who. And yes...I know what “literally” means. Ghost was a bona fide cultural juggernaut. It was the highest grossing film of the ENTIRE YEAR! People lost their goddamn friggin’ minds over this flick. Ladies swamped hair salons and demanded boy haircuts. Tens of thousands of babies were conceived during phallic pottery sessions gone awry. The Righteous Brothers 1965 version of “Unchained Melody” raced back up the Billboard charts and started to get spun and middle school dances, right between Bell Biv Devoe and “High Enough” by Damn Yankees (I can personally assure you that this last thing is 100% true). So why this movie? I guess it’s highly relatable. Few people have traveled to Mars to cavort with three-breasted women, but almost everyone knows a handful of dead people.
What happens is this: we open on three face mask-wearing figures (VERY 2020) doing some intense demo on an abandoned Soho loft. These figures are Moore, Swayze, and man who is only famous because his last name is Goldwyn, Tony Goldwyn. The fellas are shirtless and just ripped to shreds. Moore is Molly, a scarcely employed potter and Swayze is Sam Wheat, her medium successful banker boyfriend. Goldwyn is Sam’s coworker and BFF Carl. And the loft? The loft is obnoxiously massive. They don’t even realize how big it is! They pull down a ceiling and Molly coos “Ohhh and extra 20 feet...we can build ourselves a second floor!” You know who lives in an apartment this large? No one! You could fit John Lennon’s entire Dakota apartment in the foyer of this joint. The chances that people who could afford a spot like this would do their own construction? Less than zero chances. Carl suggests that they fix the place up and sell it for a profit. Molly tells Carl that he’s obsessed with money. So we already know: Carl=obsessed with money. The next morning Sam and Carl are on the way to their jobs at a non-specific Wall Street money making institution when Carl spots a Ferrari and turns green with envy. Just in case you weren’t paying attention in the scene that happened 10 seconds ago: Carl is wealth obsessed! Sam and Carl work at a bank (I guess) and Sam is higher up the food chain as he has an actual office whereas Carl works at a random desk under the fluorescents out with the Plebeians. Sam’s office ain’t much to look at either, to tell you the truth. It hardly looks like the office of a Master of the Universe (note: this is a reference to Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities....not He-Man and Co). Carl asks to borrow Sam’s super secret passwords to move some funds around and Sam gives it right up. I scratch my chin.
Back up in Soho, Molly has got the loft tricked out like WHAT!? Did they send an emergency reality TV crew in there or something?? She’s got an espresso machine and a jukebox and Haagen-Dazs kiosk and pretty much every item that defined status in the late 80’s. She has even hired movers to crane lift a ten foot stone statue of Our Lady of Whatever into the apartment because fuck you. One night while lying in bed Sam starts to look like he’s got something on his mind grapes so Molly asks what’s the what? Sam says he’s full of fear because his life is going TOO damn good. He says he’s afraid he’s gonna lose everything. I mean....he’s not wrong! Later, Sam wakes up to find Molly spinning pottery on her...you know...pottery spinner. Sam sits behind her and they clasp hands and stroke a mound of clay into a pottery dick. Molly is all “you fresh! Let’s crank Unchained Melody and BALL!” And so begins one of the most famous sexless sex scenes in cinema history. They just kind of stand there smooching and threatening to feel each other’s areas. You almost see the upper tier of Sam’s pubes....but it could just as easily be a shadow. They gotta keep it PG-13. Lots of smoke....no actual flames.
The next day at the office Sam is in a twist when he discovers that there’s too much money in some of the accounts he’s in charge of. Herelays his concerns to Carl, who says “I’m sure it’s nothing...don’t even worry about it. Also—where will you be at 10 o’clock tonight? Exact location, please?” Turns out Sam and Molly have tickets to see Macbeth (Scottish play...bad luck...do not go!). After the performance the kids decide to casually stroll through a rough part of town and discuss their dreams for the future. Molly wants to get married but Sam can’t even bring himself to tell her that she loves her! He just replies “ditto” when she tells him that she loves him. How can they get mar....OH SHIT!!...the dude from the third vignette in Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train emerges from the shadows and puts a gun up in Sam’s face! Here I’d like to mention that I was once mugged at gunpoint and offered my muggers the bag of Chinese takeout that I was carrying. They declined because they said they did not like Chinese food. Anyway, the mugger wants Sam’s wallet...and he’s ready to give it up...but then the mugger smashes Molly in the grill so Sam rips his throat out! Not really, though....but he should have! Always go with your signature move, dude! They tussle some and the gun goes off and Sam chases the mugger up Astor Place. When he returns to check on Molly he finds her unharmed, which is good, and also cradling his dead body, which is NOT so good! A brilliant white light appears in the sky so...you know...step into the light, Carole Ann. But Sam runs from the light ‘cuz dying ain’t baller.
Sam rides to the hospital with Molly and the dead version of himself. While he’s seated in the waiting room waiting for...some news?...a ghost who looks like Abe Vigoda’s balls approaches Sam and lays down the law. Sam is dead, obvi, and he’s gonna be there (wherever there is) for an indeterminate amount of time. So that sucks. He can’t touch anything... HOWEVER....he can walk through walls and through people and shit. And when he walks through stuff he makes a cool lightsaber whooshing sound. These special effects look like velveeta now but they looked pretty boss in 1990. While Sam and the old man ghost are rapping about the afterlife some rando in the OR dies and is immediately sucked up into whatever lies above. The old man says he’s glad the newly dead man ascended and was not taken by “the other ones.” The Other Ones as in the Grateful Dead spin-off or...like...The Others from that Nicole Kidman flick? The rules of ghosting are super confusing so far! After his funeral Sam spends most of his days hanging around the loft in the unfortunate maroon polo shirt that he died in. Hey man...at least he didn’t die covered in pottery and sex. Or on Halloween! He sits back and watches while Carl comforts Molly and helps her sort through his belongings. Carl is like “hey...do you want me to throw out slash keep Sam’s book of secret passwords?” Molly says that she would like to hang onto it. Carl looks nervous. They obviously can’t see Sam but you know who can? The cat!! This just confirms what I have long suspected about my own cats: that they spend most of their days staring at Patrick Swayze’s ghost.
While Molly and Carl are out shopping for $15k coffee tables, the murder mugger breaks into the apartment. Sam is like WTF!? I’m like WTF!? Is this guy just a super thorough mugger who is still p.o.’d that he never got Sam’s wallet?? Or is something deeper and more nefarious at play here? The latter. Definitely. Molly comes home while the bad dude is still in the apartment and starts getting undressed because of course she does. Sam wants to warn her but he cannot as he is the titular ghost. Instead, he screams at the cat, who scratches the mugger’s face off! Sam chases the mugger back to Brooklyn....which seems like a real gyp to me, him having to run. I mean, can’t he just float?? Here I want to mention the fact that the mugger is so dedicated to his craft that he leaves the house wearing a filthy T-shirt, black gloves, and a perma-scowl....in the middle of July in NYC! So Sam is on the MTA mean mugging the mugger when the big tall dude from Better off Dead and actual dead person Vincent Schiavelli starts screaming at him to get off the train. Sam is all “are you talking to moi??” He is. He’s so pissed that there’s another ghost on his train that he smashes a window. Wait, ghosts can break windows?? Ahh, I’m sure they explain it to us.
The mugger lives in a part of Prospect Heights where you can’t get a pour over for less than $10 in 2020. According to this movie this was where all of the blacks and Puerto Rican’s lived in 1990, which leans racist. Now we know the mugger’s name is Willy Lopez and that he lives in a one bedroom squat on Prospect Street (current Zestimate: $3200/mo.) and that he’s working for someone else. Some who REALLY wants Sam’s book of secret passwords. Oh man—I wonder if Willy’s paymaster is Carl!? Just kidding....I already know that it’s Carl. I’ve seen this movie like 40 times. Since there aren’t any good craft cocktail bars in the hood yet (can ghosts drink booze? God, I hope so. For their sake) Sam wanders into some schlocky fortune teller joint, where he meets Burglar star Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar winning character Ms. Oda Mae Brown. She’s apparently a sham clairvoyant (unlike the rest of them?) but when Sam starts to offer his commentary on her bogus fortune telling skills, Oda Mae can hear him speaking! At first she’s like “nahhh” but Sam is all “say Sam Wheat!” and she says “Sam Wheat” and this shit is on like mahjong! Why she can suddenly hear dead Patrick Swayze and not everyone else in the universe who has died is never properly explained. It is what it is!
Although speaking to the undead dead should totally be a boon to her business, Oda Mae looks dimly on this new supernatural ability from the get go. Sure, she can talk to a ghost, but he’s pushy and wants her to do shit. Sam figures he can have her contact Molly and tell her that he’s...still dead? They show up at the loft and Sam feeds Oda Mae personal details about their private life to try to convince Molly that she isn’t a charlatan. “I know about the picture in Reno! I know you like to put toenail shavings in your lattes! I know you write your name in your undies!” Molly is still skeptical because JESUS CHRIST but she agrees to head out to a cafe with Oda Mae for a light lunch. Man, I’d hate to be the poor bastard stuck waiting on THAT table. “Hi...table for 3? Well...actually....really only 2.” Luckily they are seated at a 4 Top because Patrick Swayze still occupies space. Oda Mae lays down the Will Lopez angle but Molly calls bullcrap and tries to run out of the cafe. Sam makes Oda Mae call ditto. The music swells. Molly believes! So that’s awesome-ish but Oda Mae is all set with this nonsense. She tells Molly to have a nice life, and Sam, a nice death, and then she catches the JZ back to BK. What does Molly do with this profoundly life-upending information? Immediately calls Sam’s sketchy squash buddy Carl, of course (note: they are never actually shown playing squash....but it is assumed. By me.) Carl doesn’t believe Molly because why would you? I mean....ghosts don’t really exist, right?....RIGHT!??
Carl is definitely rattled to hear the name Willy Lopez come out of Molly’s mouth. He tells her he’s gonna go asses the sitch. Sam tags along so he can watch his buddy tune this fucker up. But when Carl reaches Willy’s crib the only buddies to be found are Carl and Willy! Try not to shit your drawers, people. So Carl is the evil Svengali behind all of this evil....but also...not really? He’s got $4 million dollars tied up in a bank account but he owes it to some shittily explained drug dealers. The only way to access the account is with Sam’s secret passwords. So Sam has been dead for, what, four months and they haven’t changed his passwords?? Come on, now! Also—Carl’s cut is only $80k! Ain’t gonna be buying many Testarossas with that kind of change, bro. Certainly not enough scratch to kill your BFF over! Carl still orders Willy to murder Oda Mae cuz he’s a crazy animal. He must have mad reasonable hitman rates, this Willy Lopez. Sam is predictably apoplectic when he learns that his best friend had him murdered. He tries to beat the shit out of Carl but non-ghost beats ghost every time (or does it??).
Molly tries to tell her tale of celestial woe to a NYPD detective who is totally Milton from Office Space. He looks at her like “I know you’re bereaved but maybe maybe lay off the Bartels & Jaymes.” She asks if he’d at least check for a file on Willy Lopez. Turns out Willie doesn’t have one, ‘cuz he’s a smooth criminal, but our friend Oda Mae Brown has one that’s ten inches thick (their words...not mine. It looks a half an inch thick at most). Just petty larceny and whatnot but Molly is still crushed. Her little ghost fantasy is proving to be as fleeting as a ghost. Meanwhile Carl finally has got his ill gotten gains prepared for transfer (he must’ve stolen the password book while I was refilling my wine). He’s feeling the boldness so obviously his next best move is to go put the moves on Molly. He shows up at the loft super late and asks Molly for a cup of coffee, which is a HUGE red flag. A cup of coffee at night? Might as well ask for a Bloody Mary, ya douche. Sam, who already understandably hates Carl for having caused his death, is particularly displeased to see him creeping on his former lady. Hey, maybe he just wants to chit chat...OPE!....Molly turns around and Carl spills the entire cup of coffee on himself accidentally on purpose. She’s like “oh shit...let me get you a hoodie or something.” But Carl is all “Nah, I’ll just tear my shirt off and sit here like a quivering half-naked mass of man meat,” which would be super awkward even under normal circumstances. Molly is upset because the cops told her that her dead boyfriend is actually really dead. Carl tells her that she’s fantastically gorgeous and then moves in for a rape kiss. Sam looks on like “could my death get ANY shittier!?” He leaps to his feet, Sam does, and punches a picture frame off of an end table, scaring the shit out of everyone, himself included. Molly makes Carl put his Sanka-soaked shirt on and leave.
This little picture-punching incident lights a fire under Sam’s dead ass. He decides that he needs to find that guy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ASAP and beg him to teach him some ghost tricks. So that’s exactly what he does. Old Vinny Schiavelli tells Sam that he needs to forget about his body. That he’s dead....he’s nothing! Then he tells Sam he needs to use his mind. But if he’s dead then would he still have a mind? I’m still fuzzy on the whole alive/dead thing. Basically it turns out that, if you are a ghost, you can still make contact with earthen objects if you just focus like a motherfucker. Now who’s kicking his can all over the place? Sam Wheat, that’s who!
Same busts ass down to Brooklyn to show his new pal Oda Mae his new parlor tricks. He shows up at her studio to find a queue of ghosts stretching all the way back to the Barclay’s Center. So now Oda Mae can hear other ghosts who aren’t Sam?? Just nod your heads, y’all. While he’s waiting to flick pennies at her head some ghost from Jersey jumps into Oda Mae, commandeering her body and speaking through her mouth. Oh yeah....turns out that’s totally a thing. Why wouldn’t ghosts just go jumping into strangers all willy nilly? I guess it makes the ghosts crazy tired afterwards. Just wipes ‘em the fuck out....and no one wants to see a pooped phantom! Sam pulls Oda Mae up out of there before the murderers show up. Turns out that he’s got a plan to stick it to the man, crafty casper that he is. He wants to enlist Oda Mae to empty out Carl’s bank account before Carl can transfer the money to some Bahamian bank account. They head to the bank for a hilarious extended sequence that proves that hiring the dude who directed Top Secret! was a good call. And the Whoop? She really deserved that Oscar. Sorry for your luck, Karen from Goodfellas. They take Carl’s $4 mil but Sam makes Oda Mae donate it to the catholic church. SUPER bad call, homie. Super bad.
Back at the office Carl is expecting to transfer his ill gotten gains with the smoothness. When he opens the account, however, it shows a balance of zero dollars. The dude FUHH-REEEKS! He starts running around the office like a dickhead screaming “What’s going on?? Is someone playing around with the computers?? Yeah man--your co-workers are just yanking your chain! They just thought it would be funny to spoof four million dollars out of your customers account. Also--was there no such thing as an IP Address in 1990?? Could you really just steal 4 large undetected if you had the right password? Carl races over to Molly’s and bursts through the door looking like absolute balls. Homeboy is sweating like a nun in church. He tells her that he had a big important account go wonky on him earlier in the day. Molly says, “that’s funny--I saw Oda Mae Brown withdrawing $4 mil at your bank earlier today! I wonder if these two events are related??” Carl hears this and vomits in his mind. He runs off to grab Willy Lopez so they can go murder Oda Mae. Carl...man...what’s your endgame here? Are you just gonna gun down the entire cast (the living members, anyway. Ghosts cannot be killed twice...I don’t think). The money is already gone. What are you gonna do? Audit the catholic church? Like a customer once said to me when I showed up to a brunch shift hungover as all get out: “Man...you are Fu-King-UP!”
When Carl and Willy show up at Oda Mae’s magic parlor Sam is laying in wait with his new bag of ghost tricks. He rattles his chains and fucks with the lights. He slaps Willy around and writes “boo” on the bathroom vanity, causing Willy to run from the building screaming. Ultimately ghosts are some scary shit...even the Patrick Swayze ones. Willy runs into traffic, where he is pancaked to death by a linen delivery truck. Willy’s ghost barely has time to adjust his ghost eyes before a fleet of gurgling, growling, dry-heaving black Pac Man ghosts emerge from the gutters and drag Willy down to where they make the CHUD’s. I’m willing to give most of the special effects in this movie a pass because 1990...but the angrily shitting hell ghosts are fucking hilariously terrible. Most of the movie’s expertly built suspense just evaporated like Demi Moore’s post-90’s film career.
Sam and Oda Mae hustle over to Soho to warn Molly about Carl’s murder lust. When she sees Oda Mae at the door Molly is all “Oh HELL no! I’m not opening the door...I don’t care if you know what color panties I have on!” Sam slips through the door and describes Molly’s outfit to Oda Mae...who describes it back to Molly. That’d prolly do it for me but Molly still ain’t having it. Finally, Sam asks Oda Mae to push a penny under the door. Good thing it’s 1990 otherwise people be having NO CASH! Oda Mae would prolly have to Venmo him that penny. She slides the penny under the door and Sam lifts it up with his finger and hands it to Molly. She’s impressed, don’t get me wrong, but that’s a pretty low rent ghost trick. They couldn’t have had him shoot some ectoplasm or morph into a 30 story Stay Puft Marshmallow Man? Anyway, now Molly believes. They call the police who, it should be noted, never do arrive....even though they are in the middle of Manhattan. Oda Mae decides to allow Sam to jump inside of her (hey now) so that he and Molly can have one last dance to, you guessed it, “Unchained Melody!” Did they only have the budget to license ONE song for this flick? There’s not much necking this time ‘cuz Molly thinks she’s dancing with Oda Mae...but it doesn’t really matter. Carl breaks down the door before the Righteous Brother can hit his high falsetto part. He’s got a gun and is ready to make some Ghost sequels and our boy Sam is too sapped to spook! Molly and Oda Mae run out on the fire escape and head to the scary abandoned loft upstairs ‘cuz that location will probably make for a much better movie climax than whatever’s downstairs (neighbors....the police...safety). Carl catches up to Molly and puts a gun to his head and tells Sam the invisible ghost that he wants his 4 mil pronto or he’s gonna deprive the world of G.I. Jane. Sam springs into action and beats the shit out of Carl. He must be focusing like a BASTARD, man! Not much Carl can do against an invisible opponent who has nothing to lose. After Sam throws Carl through a window, a massive falling shard of glass penetrates his midsection, sending him on a one-way trip with the belching satan ghosts. Good riddance, Goldwynator. See you at the 2016 DNC, where you inexplicably gave a speech and made Hillary Clinton lose the election.
Sam asks the ladies if they are OK. Molly says “yeah, we are fine...wait...WHAT!?” She can actually hear his voice now! And then...and then a brilliant white light shines down from heaven, illuminating Sam’s human form. Why does SHE get to see him now? Maybe JC heard about that $4 million dollar check and decided to do Sam one last solid? I don’t know. But I do know that Sam suddenly looks like a character from Ah-Ha’s “Take on Me” video. He’s all flickery and janky and they try to kiss, Sam and Molly (Oda Mae just looks on and smiles about her impending Oscar), but it looks silly as shit. Neither of them even try to move their mouths! So Sam is back but now he has to die for real...which just completely sucks. What’s the message here? If you love someone, set them free and they’ll return as a ghost...before immediately leaving again. God, can’t he just bum around Soho in his red polo eating cronuts and shit? But no--heaven or wherever is waiting. Sam says “I love you, Molly.” She says....”ditto.” Sam says “that’s nice--I’m about to die for real and you’re telling fuckin’ jokes? See ya.” Actually he just says “see ya” but I feel like there’s a little bit of stank on it. In loving memory of Patrick Swayze, Rick Aviles, Vincent Schiavelli, and summer movie seasons of summer’s past. The end.