The Frighteners

In 1964, in the town of Fairwater, Johnny Bartlett is executed for murdering 12 people at Fairwater sanatorium, driven by his desire to become the most prolific serial killer. His teenage lover, Patricia Ann Bradley, is sentenced to prison despite a lack of evidence that she helped Bartlett. Decades later, she is released into her mother's custody. In 1990, architect Frank Bannister is living a selfish, strained marriage with his wife, Debra. During a heated argument, he drunkenly crashes his car, and police later find Debra dead nearby, with the number "13" carved into her forehead. Though Frank has no memory of the incident, the trauma leaves him able to see the spirit world. In the present, he lives in the decrepit shell of the house he was building for Debra. Consumed by guilt, he has become a cynical con man, using his abilities to "exorcise" hauntings staged by ghostly partners—streetwise Cyrus, nerdy Stuart, and The Judge, an Old West gunslinger. During a job at the home of physician Lucy Lynskey and her arrogant husband Ray, Frank notices the number "37" glowing on Ray's forehead. Ray dies shortly after of a heart attack. Helping Lucy communicate with Ray's ghost, Frank witnesses a Grim Reaper–like entity crush the heart of another man marked "38". Panicked, Frank flees and follows a heavenly light to the museum, where he finds the number 39 victim. Soon after, a newspaper editor, Magda Rees-Jones—who had previously accused Frank of Debra's murder—becomes victim number 40. The Reaper destroys The Judge in the process. The mounting deaths implicate Frank, and he surrenders to the police. He is interrogated by Milton Dammers, a disturbed FBI agent traumatized by years of physical and sexual torture while working undercover in Satanic cults. Dammers is convinced Frank killed Debra and is psychically causing the unexplained heart attacks. Lucy visits Frank in jail, and they form a bond over shared loss. When the Reaper marks Lucy as victim 41, Cyrus and Stuart sacrifice themselves to save her and Frank. Unable to protect Lucy as a human, Frank has her induce a near-death state, slowing his heart with drugs and sealing him in a freezer. Dammers intervenes, capturing Lucy and leaving Frank to die, but Frank's spirit escapes and damages the pursuing Reaper's form, revealing it to be Bartlett himself. After Frank revives, Lucy warns Patricia, her patient, about Bartlett, only to learn Patricia has remained devoted to him. Using his ashes she summoned his spirit from Hell to continue their killing spree, and murders her own mother to protect him. Frank and Lucy trap Bartlett in his urn and flee to the derelict sanatorium, planning to use its chapel to banish him to Hell. Pursued through the ruins by Patricia and Dammers, Frank experiences visions of the 1964 massacre, showing that Patricia actively participated in the killings. Frank also recalls that Bartlett's ghost murdered Debra, while Patricia carved the number into her forehead. Dammers unwittingly frees Bartlett from the urn and is promptly killed by Patricia. Patricia strangles Frank to death, but Frank's spirit forcibly pulls Patricia's from her body and drags it toward Heaven, forcing Bartlett to follow. Bartlett frees her, but the pair are seized by a demonic force and dragged into Hell. In Heaven, Frank is reunited with Cyrus, Stuart, and Debra, who restore him to life on Earth; Debra tells him to be happy. Some time later, Frank demolishes the unfinished house and begins a relationship with Lucy, who has now also gained the ability to see ghosts. ==Cast==

• Michael J. Fox as Frank Bannister, a former architect turned ghost hunter after the trauma of his wife dying. Although Jackson and Walsh envisioned The Frighteners as a low-budget film with unknown actors, Zemeckis suggested casting his Back to the Future star Fox in the lead role. Fox became enthusiastic about working with Jackson when he saw Heavenly Creatures at the Toronto International Film Festival. • Elizabeth Hawthorne as Magda Rees-Jones, the snooty British editor of the local newspaper. • Ken Blackburn as Dr. Kamins, Lucy's colleague, whom she works for, and who performed the autopsies on Bartlett's recent victims, discovering that their deaths were not of natural causes. In addition, Peter Jackson cameos as a man with piercings, his son Billy is a baby in a bouncer, Melanie Lynskey cameos as the deputy who is briefly seen standing next to Lucy Lynskey, Byron McCrawerly plays Victim #38 and Angela Bloomfield plays Frank's deceased wife, Debra. == Production ==

Development Peter Jackson and co-writer Fran Walsh conceived the idea for The Frighteners in 1992, during the script-writing phase of Heavenly Creatures. The husband and wife duo completed their first draft for The Frighteners in early January 1994. Zemeckis was so impressed with their script, he decided The Frighteners would work better directed by Jackson, executive produced by Zemeckis and funded/distributed by Universal Pictures. Universal green-lighted the film to commence pre-production on a $26 million budget in April 1994. The studio also granted Jackson and Zemeckis total artistic control and the right of final cut privilege. Zemeckis and Universal agreed on the condition that Jackson made New Zealand look similar to the Midwestern United States. Location shooting primarily included Wellington and three weeks spent in Lyttelton. Interior scenes were compiled at Camperdown Studios in Miramar. Visual effects Weta Digital created the visual effects and animation, which included CGI, as well as scale models (which were necessary to make Lyttelton look American), The extended shooting schedule owed much to the fact that scenes where ghosts and human characters interacted had to be filmed twice; once with human characters acting on set, and then with the ghost characters acting against a blue screen. The two elements would later be digitally composited into one shot with the use of split screen photography. Such sequences required precise timing from the cast as they traded dialogue with characters who were merely blank air. With digital effects work running behind schedule, Zemeckis convinced Wes Takahashi, an animation supervisor from visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to help work on The Frighteners. ==Soundtrack==

The film score was written and composed by Danny Elfman. It was released in 1996 on cassette and compact disc by MCA Records and Universal Records. The closing credits play a cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" performed by New Zealand alternative rock band The Mutton Birds. The Mutton Birds version of the song had been previously released as a B-side to their single "She's Been Talking" released in 1996. The credits also feature "Superstar", written by Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell, and performed by Sonic Youth. ==Release==

Theatrical The intended release date was October 1996, but after Universal studio executives viewed a rough cut of The Frighteners, they were impressed enough to move the release date to their "summer blockbuster slot" on July 19, 1996. In addition, Universal offered Jackson the opportunity to make King Kong, which was not released until 2005. Jackson often disputed the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)'s decision on the film's rating. Aware that he was meant to be delivering Universal a PG-13 rated film, Jackson tried his best to omit graphic violence as much as possible, but the MPAA still believed The Frighteners deserved an R rating. Home media The Frighteners was released on Laserdisc in 1996 in a standard release with Dolby surround on both Digital and Analog channels. In 1998 Universal Home Video as part of the Signature Series collection released a special edition. This includes the first release of the 14-minute longer "director's cut", plus the following extras: • Feature commentary by director Peter Jackson • 4-hour documentary The Making of The Frighteners, directed by Peter Jackson, and featuring cast interviews, rehearsals, storyboards, miniatures, and special effects • Deleted scenes • Theatrical trailer The later DVD was a re-release of this with inferior audio. The Frighteners was first released on DVD in August 1998, but included no special features. To coincide with the release of Jackson's King Kong, which featured a version of The Frighteners that is 14 minutes longer. ==Reception==

Box office The Frighteners was released in the United States in 1,675 theaters, and opened at #5, earning $5,565,495 during its opening weekend, averaging $3,335 per theater. The film eventually grossed a worldwide total of $29,359,216. The Frighteners ended up being a box office disappointment, mostly due to competition from Independence Day; in interviews conducted years after The Frighteners release, Jackson commented he was disappointed by Universal's ubiquitous marketing campaign, including a poster which "didn't tell you anything about the picture", Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times stated "Director Peter Jackson, at home with all kinds of excess in New Zealand, keeps everything spinning nicely, not even losing a step when the mood turns increasingly disturbing." Janet Maslin from The New York Times enjoyed The Frighteners, but "walked out the theater with mixed emotions," she commented that "Peter Jackson deserves more enthusiasm for expert, imaginative effects than for his live actors anyhow. These lively touches would leave The Frighteners looking more like a more frantic Beetlejuice if Jackson's film weren't so wearyingly overcrowded. The Frighteners is not immune to overkill, even though most of its characters are already dead." Jeff Vice of the Deseret News praised the acting in the film, with the performances of Fox and Alvarado in particular, but said that there were also "bits that push the taste barrier too far and which grind things to a screeching halt", and that if "Jackson had used the restraint he showed in Heavenly Creatures, the movie could have "been the best of its kind". Critic Christopher Null praised the film, as he described it as a mixture between Ghostbusters and Twin Peaks. Michael Drucker of IGN said that although the film would not make Jackson's top five of movies, it "is a harmless and fun dark comedy that you'll enjoy casually watching from time to time". The Frighteners received mixed reviews by critics from Jackson's native country, New Zealand. Critic James Berardinelli believed that although The Frighteners wasn't "a bad film", it was "a disappointment, following Jackson's powerful, true-life matricide tale, Heavenly Creatures", and because of that "The Frighteners fell short of expectations by being just one of many in the long line of 1996 summer movies." Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four, and felt that Jackson was more interested in prosthetic makeup designs, computer animation, and special effects than writing a cohesive storyline. Ebert and critic Gene Siskel gave it a "two thumbs down" rating on their TV show At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, described the film's special effects as "ugly, aggressive" and "proliferating", saying that "trying to keep interested in [the special effects] was like trying to remain interested in a loudmouth shouting in [his] ear". Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle stated that "instead of moving the horror genre in new directions, The Frighteners simply falls apart from its barrage of visual effects and the overmixed onslaught of Danny Elfman's music score". The Austin Chronicles Joey O'Brien, said that although the screenplay was "practically loaded with wild ideas, knowingly campy dialogue and offbeat characterizations", it "switched gears" too fast and too frequently that "the audience is left struggling to catch up as [The Frighteners] twists and turns its way unmercifully towards a literally out-of-this-world finale". Accolades At the 23rd Saturn Awards, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films honored Jackson with nominations for Best Director and Best Writing, the latter he shared with wife Fran Walsh. The Frighteners also was nominated for Best Horror Film, and for its Special Effects, Make-up (Rick Baker) and Music (Danny Elfman). Michael J. Fox and Jeffrey Combs were also nominated for their work. ==See also==