by Ryan Lewellen
Desert town dimwit deputy, Langley (Was that name intended as a joke?), is on the trail of kidnapped runaway bride, Kate. We’re not supposed to consider him stupid. Compared to his sheriff brother, Bubba, he might be the sharpest needle in the cactus patch. Langley is, however, incredibly slow and ignorant. Kate’s disappearance is a mystery, and a relentless series of creepy supernatural occurrences leads the only hero the movie has to offer on a trail to a ghost town… literally. A reanimated corpse grabs him by the hands and makes him the new sheriff, a handful of creepy people routinely vanish before his eyes, and the barkeep lets him know he’ll have to kill the dastardly Devlin so the town’s curse can be lifted. Still, after being pummeled by a helpful barrage of evidence, our man Langley can’t help but ask, “What’s going on, here?”
One can imagine the potential a premise such as this could offer. A horror film featuring an undead Satanist cowboy as its antagonist certainly perked my nerd. I expected a creative mix of the fright film and the western, or perhaps it would make some clever observations about history and ghost stories. Neither can be found in this not-at-all spine-tingling thriller. Nothing fresh or intriguing will be enjoyed here. Even an entertaining fully conceived story was out of reach for these filmmakers.
The rules don’t make any sense. The town is cursed by its original sheriff, but his old nemesis is doing the haunting? “This town and I will never rest until you are dead, Devlin!”, he proclaims while henchmen bury him alive. When Langley stumbled upon him, though, it seemed he’d been enjoying quite a lot of rest, in the form of one hell of a dirt nap. The design is problematic, as well. There doesn’t seem to be any logic in which denizens should look… ya know, dead. I suppose you could say there is reason in keeping the young foxy girl Langley shags looking alive and well, but beyond her, there doesn’t appear to be much thought put into it. Devlin looks really nasty because he’s the bad guy, but a couple of awfully pale children have dark circle under their eyes, and the blacksmith looks like he has ten years before retirement age. That lack of consistency is distracting and confusing, and it helps ruin whatever endearment the film might have otherwise achieved.
Operating on a low budget, Ghost Town does produce a few cool images via practical effects. That dead sheriff is particularly fun, but no amount of over-filled squibs or animatronics can really make this thing worth seeing, unless you are a Charles Band completist (he was executive producer). As the movie goes on, the rules continue falling apart, and at the climax, it isn’t entirely clear why any one of the mostly corporeal ghosts (fleshy enough to make whoopee with Langley, and be killed by Devlin, at least) couldn’t have killed their oppressor long before the future cop showed up to be given the task.
I might as well give you the only great line (spoken by the only funny character, before he is somehow ejected from the movie and never heard from again), since I can’t recommend seeing the whole flick:
“Accident? An accident is when a June bug flies up your ass! And this ain’t June!”
