NOTE: This review post has an emphasis for the LGBTQIA community for June Pride Month.
Sherman Hemsley made a name for himself playing George Jefferson on The Jeffersons, a spin-off to All in the Family. George was so much like Archie Bunker part of the humor of the show was watching George get his comeuppance in the absurdity of his actions. However, off-screen, Hemsley was reportedly different. Yet, very few people knew much about his private life. Hemsley rarely gave interviews nor discussed much of his life.
By the time he passed in 2012, there were suspicions of his life as he had been living in El Paso, Texas for years with his friend, Kenny Johnston, who was reportedly his talent manager. A lot of people felt that Hemsley had been a closeted gay man his whole life. He never got married nor had any children. Yet, who lives with their talent manager as a roommate for several decades, even if he is a close friend?
Part of the reason Hemsley was in El Paso was that he had to declare bankruptcy and leave Hollywood. And Ghost Fever is a good reason why he declared bankruptcy. Following the success of The Jeffersons, Hemsley had put up about $3 million of his own money to get the movie off the ground. Coming in the aftermath of Ghostbusters, the movie was an attempt to be a Laurel andb Hardy/Abbott and Costello style of comedy where Hemsley along with Luis Alvalos (of Electric Company fame) as two sheriff deputies who find themselves in a haunted Georgia plantation.
If you’ve never heard of this movie, there’s a reason. Principal photography ended in 1985, but there were reshoots over the next two years and it was distributed by Miramax Films, back when it was a small independent company. The movie was released into as little theaters as possible to fulfill a contract obligation and bombed. There’s not even a record I could find of its box office gross. It later made the rounds on premium pay cable networks like HBO and was released on video.
The German VHS cover pictured above actually makes the movie out to be a cooler horror comedy but more like Billy Crystal doing his very dated and racially insensitive blackface impersonation of Sammy Davis Jr. with sex and nudity. Part of me wonders if the movie was originally intended to capitalize on the sex comedy crazy of the early 1980s before parental groups and critics caused a pushback in the mid-1980s. The movie is rated PG but does have some questionable content such as Hemsley’s Buford Washington being subjected to a torture device that was used on enslaved people that probes them in the rectum while trying to pulverize their genitalia.
Oh, and the movie begins for some reason in 1880 when good ole boy Andy Lee (Myron Healey) is being buried in the nearby cemetery. The ghost of one of his father’s enslaved people, Jethro (also Hemsley behind fake facial hair and a white powdery make-up to make him appear as a ghost), summons Andy’s spirits to tell him his father, Beauregard Lee (Pepper Martin), has been causing some problems from beyond the grave. And then the movie time jumps more than 100 years as the plantation remains a rumored haunted place.
Buford tells his partner Benny Alvarez (Avalos) of an incident that occurred in his childhood when he and his others were terrorized by an old man dressed as a vampire and some old women. People had avoided the plantation ever since. However, Sheriff Clay (also Martin) says the county has taken it over for failure to back taxes of $60,000. Buford and Benny are to go serve a simple eviction warrant. The set that is supposed to be their station looks like something that was leftover from Barney Miller.
However, there’s a lot of crazy things that happen. But since the budget is so low, most of it includes doors opening by invisible forces and cheap lightning effects. The stupidest part is that Benny doesn’t believe it all even when he witnesses it with his own eyes, including Buford being subjected to one of the torture devices. They discover two blonde sisters, Linda (Deborah Benson) and Lisa (Diana Brookes), who are descendants of Beauregard and Andy. They’re also dead spirits who have to live in the house or else they’ll rot away if they spend too much time outside the house. Apparently, they’re the same old women Buford saw when he was younger.
Not much happens in the realm of comedy. The writer, Oscar Brodney, was in his mid-70s when the movie went in production. He hadn’t had a writing credit since 1971. And this is his last writing credit even though he lived until 2007 dying at 100. He had previously co-wrote the screenplay for Harvey and did an uncredited rewrite on Abbot and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. I feel he had written this script in the 1940s or 1950s but couldn’t get it produced so stuck it in a drawer and left it there for 30 years before polishing it off after horror comedies like Hysterical and especially Ghostbusters hit the theaters.
The characters of Andy and Jethro don’t add much as they mainly stand around off-screen watching things. Something tells me they probably weren’t in the original script as they have the abilities to do a lot of things later in the movie that affects the living people. Reportedly the director, Lee Madden, was so upset with all the changes, he used the pseudonym Alan Smithee to keep his name off it. That used to be a name directors used when they didn’t want to take credit. It’s since been discontinued with directors or producers just taking a pen name that doesn’t sound as made-up. Walter Hill used the name Thomas Lee on Supernova. Alec Baldwin replaced his name with Harry Kirkpatrick on Shortcut to Happiness, a loose modern-day adaptation of The Devil and Daniel Webster and David O. Russell used Stephen Greene after leaving the production of Accidental Love when it was called Nailed.
In other words, “Alan Smithee” used to be a moniker that was a warning to people that what they were about to watch is terrible. And a movie like Ghost Fever is terrible. There’s also a medium, Madam St. Espirit (Jennifer Rhodes) who seems who performs a seance to summon the Beauregard in human form. But he’s now a vampire. Apparently, the spirit of the enslaved people performed voodoo on him and turned him into a vampire. I’m not making this up. Oh, and there are now zombies walking around outside. But Benny still doesn’t believe in vampires or zombies.
Buford remembers Beauregard as the vampire who scared him when he was younger. But Jethro and Andy are surprised, even though they’ve been wandering around since 1880, another hint they were part of a reshoot. There’s also a silly scene that has to be seen where Beauregard wraps himself in toilet paper and starts break-dancing. You know, because it was popular at the time with all those movies like Breakin’, Krush Groove and Beat Street. But even this movie makes that Electric Boogaloo sequel look like The Godfather Part II.
But Benny quickly kills Beauregard the Vampire. Yet because Linda and Lisa can’t leave the house and Buford and Benny are smitten with them, Jethro and Andy finally decide to intervene and use their supernatural powers to convince Benny to fight Terrible Tucker (Joe Frazier) in an exhibition boxing match for $60,000. Yeah, you know because it’s that easy in real life. Also, am we to presume this is happening on the same night they were at the plantation?
At this point, anyone still watching has checked out. As a matter of fact, if you had fallen asleep (and I wouldn’t fault you for doing so) and woken up 20 minutes before this movie ended, you’d think it was a totally different movie. The joke is supposed to be that Benny is a short person and Tucker is a big person and with help from Jethro and Andy, he defeats Tucker. But the sheriff fires Buford and Benny because he had intended to buy the plantation. Even though they pay the taxes, Benny and Buford drive off saying they would be better off dead. Or they could just get a job in another county. Georgia has about 130 of them. Also, since Benny defeated Tucker that would bring him a lot of fame and attention. Even James “Buster” Douglas got his own video game after defeating Mike Tyson.
Anyway, Jethro and Andy hear this while riding in the back seat and zap the tires leading to the car Buford and Benny is in to drive off a cliff and explode. And this was Miramax Films which convinced Kevin Smith not to kill off Dante Hicks at the end of Clerks (but not Clerks III SPOILER ALERT!!!). Yes, because they’re dead now, Buford and Benny can spend their afterlife with Lisa and Linda at the plantation…until the taxes come due again and they’re screwed again.
But we get a scene of Buford breaking the fourth wall and saying to the audience, “Us dead people sure know how to live.” And then the credits roll as Hemsley leads his vocals to a rap title song. The song isn’t that bad, I admit. It’s just that before YouTube where both the end title song and the full movie can be found, people had to sit through the entire movie to hear it.
Also, during production The Jeffersons would abruptly and controversially canceled by CBS during the summer of 1985. Hemsley was able to get another series, Amen, on NBC for five more years and voiced B.P. Richfield on Dinosaurs. But this was his only lead role even though he appeared in supporting roles in other movies. However, they were also duds like Mr. Nanny, Senseless, Stewardess School and Screwed, which would make an allusion to his suspected homosexuality.
In another twist of life somewhat imitating art (even though this movie is far from art as possible), Hemsley in death would find himself part of a legal battle. A man from Philadelphia, Richard Thornton, would claim to be Hemsley’s half-brother, and legal next of kin. Hemsley passed away on July 24, 2012 but he wasn’t buried until Nov. 9 of that year in Fort Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso as Hemsley had served four years in the United States Air Force.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 