- Directed by John Irvin
- Written by Peter Straub, Lawrence D. Cohen
- Stars Craig Wasson, Alice Krige, Fred Astaire
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 50 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upGQpr5CwMA
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a long, slow story of a very slow revenge. It wasn’t dull, but it did seem a little stretched out getting to the good stuff. It’s gradually explained and unfolds, much of it in flashback. If you’re in the mood for a low-key and chilling tale, this one’s for you.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open in a snowy village, where four old men all have nightmares. Credits roll.
Sears James tells a ghost story to the assembled group of old tuxedo-clad men. Ricky Hawthorne, John Jaffey, and Edward Wandeerley sit there and listen to the story. These old men get together to tell each other ghost stories regularly; they are the “Chowder Society.”
Elsewhere, David talks to a mysterious woman in his bed. “Who are you?” She replies, “You know,” and rolls over to reveal she’s a rotted corpse. He backs away and falls out the window to his death.
David’s twin brother, Donnie, gets a call to come home for the funeral. Don is a writer, and also Edward’s father. Don has a feeling that his brother was murdered, but his father doesn’t want to hear that; he tells him he slept with David’s fiance.
That night, the four old men all have nightmares again. In the morning, Edward wanders around outside in the snowstorm. He hears a woman’s voice, and it’s that same dead woman; he backs away and falls off the bridge to his death. Ricky, John, and Sears talk about their friend’s death. John’s pretty dazed, but Ricky and Sears share a look.
Meanwhile, Don goes through old photos at home, and he finds one the four men and a woman, but her face is blurred out.
Ricky goes inside an old, abandoned house. Does he hear a woman laughing? He looks around and finds some squatters. They claim the owner who lived there gave them permission to live there. They’re a little crazy, and the old man gets scared and leaves. He later identifies Gregory Bate from police photos. Gregory was a member of some kind of cult, and he’s known to be unstable. Some time later, Don shows Ricky the woman’s photograph and asks who she is. Later, Don finds Gregory in his house.
Don shows up to their meeting and tells the three old men that he wants into the Chowder Society. The cost of admission is a story. “I think this is a ghost story,” he begins a flashback. Don was teaching at the university when he met a mysterious woman named Alma. The two went out on a date and hit it off. One thing leads to another, and they have weird sex. They hang out a lot together, but she never says anything about herself other than she’s terrified of water. She tells Don that she wants to visit his hometown and meet Don’s father and brother before the wedding. It’s important to her to be married in front of Don’s father and his friends– the whole town.
Alma’s… odd, and Don wants to delay the wedding. She reacts badly and Don starts having nightmares about her. The next day, Alma is gone; left town. Time passes and the dean fires Don because his work is failing as he’s suffering over Alma. David and Don talk on the phone, and David says he’s getting married to a girl named “Alma.” Yes, that Alma. Don warns his brother that she’s dangerous, but the next thing he heard was that his brother was dead.
Back in the present, Don tells the three old men that all that actually happened. He shows them the old photo of them with the blurry woman, and he says that’s Alma. The old guys don’t doubt that the story is true. They knew she’d be coming back.
John attacks his wife Milly that night, acting out a nightmare. The next morning, the two talk about it. He keeps saying, “There’s no pulse. She was dead,” but he won’t explain more. John is a retired doctor, and Milly sees a strange woman in the waiting room who isn’t there when she looks again. When John sees Alma, he calls her “Eva” and then dies from a heart attack.
Sears and Ricky tell Don their story. The four men all knew Eva Galley, and they admit that they killed her fifty years ago. They tell the story as another flashback to those days, when they were all a lot younger. Eva is the new girl in town, and all four men want to get to know her better. She’s rented that big house we saw earlier.
The four friends all want Eva, but there’s only one of her to go around until Edward has sex with her– unsuccessfully. Later, they all get drunk and want to hear more about Ed’s sex, and he covers up his failure. They all go over to Eva’s house to dance with her, which soon devolves into a fight. Eva gets bashed in the head, and medical student John says she has no pulse– she’s dead. They load up her body into the car and push it into the lake. As the car sinks, they all watch as Eva wakes up, bangs on the window, and drowns. Oops!
Ricky and Sears tell Don that the four men swore never to speak of it. The crime was never discovered, and no one ever came looking for Eva. Don thinks Eva has come back as Alma and wants revenge.
The three go to Eva’s long-abandoned house, where Gregory and his brother had been hiding before. Don breaks his leg falling through the rotten staircase, so Sears goes in the car to get help as Ricky explores the old house. Sears doesn’t get very far before running off the road and dying thanks to Eva showing up in the middle of the road.
Ricky flags down a passing car, but it turns out to be Gregory, who is clearly working for dead-Eva. Ricky stabs the lunatic, and the car crashes. He then calls the sheriff to check out the lake where they dumped that car decades ago.
Don, back at the haunted house, hears Alma/Eva wandering around in her bridal gown. She’s just a ghost, but they have a conversation. She slowly walks to Don, and she plans bad things for him.
Meanwhile, Ricky and the sheriff tow the old car out of the lake. As Eva’s drowned corpse falls out of the car, it crumbles away. Back at the house, Alma’s ghost vanishes.
Commentary
The four members of the Chowder Society were all big stars in their younger days, but they were all way past their primes here. Most of the publicity at the time focused on these “big names” in the cast, but Craig Wasson and Alice Krige did most of the heavy lifting here.
It’s definitely one of the slowest stories of revenge. It took decades before the ghost returned for revenge. It’s a little slow to watch, with two long flashbacks, and surprisingly little action.
It’s a very good ghost story and mystery, but it’s a little slow.