High Spirits is set in Ireland where Peter Plunkett (Peter O'Toole) is told he has two weeks left to pay the mortgage on his ancestral Castle turned hotel, unfortunately the hotel isn't very popular & in an attempt to muster business Peter advertises it as an authentic haunted Castle complete with real ghosts. Peter's attempt's at fooling his guests into thinking the Castle is haunted fail miserably, however all is not lost as then the real ghosts take over. Much hilarity ensues, not...<br /><br />This English American co-production was written & directed by Neil Jordan & quite frankly I think High Spirits is a pretty bad film. The script is a muddled mess, there are sporadic moments of supposed comedy, there's an awful romance between American tourist Steve Guttenberg & ghost Daryl Hannah, there's stupid drama & it tries to chuck some horror into the mix as well. None of it works, it never comes together as one coherent piece & the fact that it's so unfunny, childish, predictable & rather boring doesn't help my love for it. The character's are clichéd, the ghosts are underused & did I mention that it wasn't funny yet? So here we have a film that tries to be a horror comedy but fails on both counts, High Spirits is not a film I look back on with any fondness. At all.<br /><br />Director Jordan has apparently gone on record as saying that he had no input over the editing process & what was released was substantially different to his original cut, to be honest that sounds like an excuse for making such a bad film as he still directed the scenes which ended up on screen, it was still his script this mess came from & quite frankly how much difference could there have been? Was there hours of unused footage? Would any of it been any funnier if there was? I imagine the studio probably tweaked it a bit but maybe because Jordan's original cut was even worse, I just don't believe this 'it would have been brilliant if the studio had left it alone' rubbish., anyway I guess we'll never find out either way... I must admit the film looks quite nice with good sets although the special effects vary between impressive & poor. On a side note did anyone else notice the white horse Guttenberg lands in front of when he falls out of the tree hit by lightening (don't ask)? I'm positive you can see the horse's penis dangling between it's legs, not that I specifically look out for these things you understand...<br /><br />Technically High Spirits is fine with decent production values. Looking at the cast list it's pretty impressive although no one covers themselves in glory, O'Toole is good but that's it. Gutteneberg tries to act all emotional, oh dear...<br /><br />High Spirits is a comedy that simply isn't funny & it's story is a mess that doesn't entertain, I don't know what else to say other than I didn't like it. Could have been better, much better. Watch Ghostbusters (1984) instead to see how a proper supernatural comedy should be done.