The Haunted Castle (1960)

Excellent adaptation.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Looking for Musicals to see for an ICM challenge,I found a review for a quirky-sounding German flick, but was sadly unable to find it anywhere. Gathering up Musicals to view in the oncoming week, I got very lucky and stumbled on the movie (with Eng Subs!) Which led to me visiting the haunted castle.The plot:Bricked into a castle, a group of thieves die and turn into ghosts. Whilst building work is done on the property 100's of years later, the wall is knocked down,and the ghost are freed. Believing they need to make up for their misdeeds,the ghosts start helping heiress Charlotte to keep the place neat and tidy. Trying to deal with the debt that her dad has left it with, Charlotte soon becomes spooked of losing all she owns.View on the film:Done as a sequel to Das Wirtshaus im Spessart, the screenplay by Günter Neumann & Heinz Pauck gives a few nods to the first movie, but smartly decide to make this a film that can stand on its own. Going for some dark satirical songs from the ghosts about the last remaining Nazis, the writers' strike a fine "Family Friendly" atmosphere, via satirical jokes and raunchy asides for the adults, and wacky ghost action for the kids.Although some of the wires are visible, director Kurt Hoffmann & cinematographer Günther Anders mask the limitations with a cheerful atmosphere, where the towering Gothic castle allowing Hoffmann to send the camera gliding round the corridors, which shake with "ghostly" wire work causing funny slap-stick scenes of everything being pushed around. Showing an eye for style in the Musical numbers, Hoffmann makes the appearances of the ghosts impressive, with neon outlines to their headless state giving the wise-cracking ghosts a spooky edge. Trying to keep the family castle, the pretty Liselotte Pulver gives a very good performance as Charlotte,thanks to Pulver making her a damsel who needs no ones help,and also giving Charlotte a comedic grin, in welcoming ghosts to the haunted castle.

"Das Spukschloß im Spessart" or "The Haunted Castle" is a West German film from 1960, so this one had its 55th anniversary last year and it is the second film from the Spessart series. Lilo Pulver returns and there are more familiar faces in here, for example director Kurt Hoffmann. I watched this one right after having seen the original first film from a couple years earlier and while I already felt the first wasn't memorable at all, I must say that this sequel is even weaker, clearly inferior on many occasions. It runs for roughly 100 minutes too and focuses mostly on the areas comedy, romance and music. There is more music than in the first. And there is also a slight ounce of horror in here. But it's not really intended to be scary and it also isn't scary, especially by today's standards. There are many scenes with dancing ghosts and it felt a bit embarrassing to me, maybe when the film was at its weakest. In addition, I must say the story was very forgettable too. In my opinion, one film would have been (more than) enough already and this second movie adds extremely little. This is especially disappointing as I was curious about the young Heinz Baumann, but he is in line with all the other mediocrity we are served here. Watch something else instead and it's embarrassing to see how highly some people rate this film (4 stars is already generous) and that the franchise still was not over at this point.

This sequel to Wirtshaus im Spessart is a slightly weaker effort that, at times, feels like a saccharine Disney production from that time period, particularly with regard to the hammy performances by the ghosts.However, the film is redeemed by the ever-delightful Liselotte Pulver's talent for light comedy.Set two hundred years after the previous film, the wirsthaus has been demolished to make way for a petrol station, reflecting the speed of reconstruction and modernisation in 1950s West Germany. This unleashes the ghosts of the highwaymen from the first film who seek out the descendant of Liselotte's previous character in an effort to redeem themselves.Whilst the humour is, on the surface, largely slapstick, there is much commentary and satire on the state of German politics as well.The film is fast-paced and suitably light-hearted with some delightful musical numbers. Indeed, even the opening credits are sung.The special effects though, are distractingly bad and, like its predecessor, the lack of adventure in terms of scale, settings and cinematography really reflect the lack of confidence in German cinema at this time compared with during the Weimar Republic. Clearly the nation was reinventing itself after the horrors of the war and the self-deprecating humour and satire aimed at politicans and bureaucrats reflect the desperately-needed change in attitude towards leaders after the disaster of the Third Reich.However, for all of its lack of artistic spirit, this film reflects the reinvention of Germany as a modern democracy, able to laugh at itself, point honestly to its shortcomings and leave well and truly behind its former insularity and nationalistic temperament. Thus, it is a reflection of a much more positive and mature people who are just starting to find a new place for themselves as co-leaders in a modernising Europe.

basically a sequel to "Das Wirtshaus I'm Spessart" based on the popular German fairy tale/legend, which came to the big screen 2 years earlier, this movie stars nearly all of Germany's comedians of that time. At first a mixture of comedy and musical, it is also pretty political and aims mostly for post-war short-comings after the German "Wirtschaftswunder", like pensions still paid to former "Wehrmacht"-Officers, but makes fun also of celebrities of that time like the liaison of Onassis and Maria Callas, just to name one. The story is about the ghosts of the robbers from "Wirtshaus I'm Spessart" and how they redeem themselves. As a punishment for their crimes they were locked up in the basement of the "Wirtshaus" (pub) to starve to death, accompanied by a curse that they should rot there as long the walls would be standing. The wall falls when the old pub has to make room for a gas-station and a new motel next to the brand new freeway and the souls of the robbers are freed. Now ghosts they come to the conclusion that they have to do something good, so be released. So they decide to search for the Castle of the Comte, they blackmailed in the first Movie and who resided over the Woods they were thieving in.They find it to be inherited by the last Comtess, played by Lieselotte Pulver, who has no money at all, because her late father lost all the family fortune.(to be continued)