Cyrus Zorba and his family inherit a nice house at just the right time, they are behind on their loans and are not in a particularly good financial situation. When they move into the new house, they find out that Cyrus’ uncle was eccentric to say the least and that he collected ghosts, among other things. They find a quiche board and a book under a hidden console in the living room. At first, the quiche board catches all their attention and tells them that there are thirteen ghosts in the house who want to harm them, maybe even kill them. When they have the book, which is in Latin, translated, more and more pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place. It is Dr. Zorba’s journal and they find out that Dr. Zorba has kept eleven ghosts trapped in the house and ghost number twelfth is himself. Unfortunately, the page about the thirteenth ghost is blank…
Did you think 13 Ghosts was a 21st century film? Then you thought wrong, the original saw its first light back in 1960 and when the film was first shown in cinemas you apparently had to have special glasses (similar to 3D glasses) to be able to see the ghosts. It would be cool if you could have experienced that, it would have certainly given the film an extra dimension.
This ghost story is so different from the remake that I’m not even going to try to compare them. This is a story that is as much about money and greed as it is about the ghosting itself. The film is mostly based on atmosphere and acting, the ghosts are there, of course, but they don’t have such a prominent role and you can actually ignore them completely, let the story do the work instead. It should be noted that Margret Hamilton, who also guest-starred in the old 60s series The Addams Family as Granny Frump, is in a rather small role.
The black and white photography is very beautiful and you feel a certain sadness that so much has been lost since the definitive advent of color film and that you never see this magnificent use of shadows nowadays. Unfortunately, the environments lack a bit of that extra mysterious touch and it never really looks as spooky as you would wish. You are never caught by any spooky surroundings. The ghosts, on the other hand, are good and don’t look like artificial monsters but like, precisely, ghosts.
An original that was actually a bit of a disappointment.
