On screen Castle ghosts emerge in comedy

Press, 28 July 1989, Page 29

On screen

Castle ghosts emerge in comedy

Peter O’Toole, Steve Guttenberg and Daryl Hannah star in a supernatural comedy, “High Spirits,” which will start at the Midcity and Hollywood, Sumner, today. The setting is a rundown castle in Ireland, where the seedy owner (O’Toole), mortgaged to the hilt, must try one last ruse to attract much-needed tourist money. When he advertises the place as being haunted, the Americans flock in, only to find that their host has used his equally run-down staff to play-act ghosts and ghouls. It is then that the real ghosts of the castle come to the fore. “High Spirits” was shot on location in Ireland, at an authentic medieval castle. The interiors were filmed at the Shepperton Studios, in England. // The writer-director, Neil Jordan, said: "I wanted to film in Ireland. I wanted it to be magical and otherwordly in the sense that still does exist in Irish mythology and legend.” For Jordan, highly regarded for his dark films, “The Company of Wolves” and “Mona Lisa,” “High Spirits” represents a new foray — into the world of comedy and grand-scale special effects. The idea for “High Spirits” developed after Jordan saw a newspaper story about a man organising ghost tours of Ireland for American tourists. “When I read the story it put in my mind the chance of doing a film about the preconceptions Americans have about the Irish and vice-versa. It’s about people who think the world is very simple and defined by one set of circumstances suddenly finding all those things

overturned,” Jordan said It use offered him a cba.ic a to write and dir?et £n elaborate comedy ffeui dealt with the fant’-sidc and the supernatural As such, “High Spirits” demanded a perfectly balanced, firstrate cast, extraordinary special effects, a romantic Irish setting, as well as the complex effects. The first role cast was that of the ghost, Mary Plunkett, condemned to be murdered by her husband every night, until, after 200 years, the spell is broken by a selfless twentieth-cen-tury American named Jack. Early on, Jordan had decided that Daryl Hannah was his Mary. “I’d seen almost everything she’d done,” the director said. “She makes the most perfect ghost you can imagine; her style of acting, her looks, her whole presence is perfect.. She’s always brought a kind of irony to acting and I wanted to add that.” Fortunately, Hannah wanted to work with Jordan as much as he wanted to work with her.