High Spirits - A Neil Jordan Film

Ghostly Comedy Starring Peter O' Toole, Daryl Hannah and Liam Neeson

Jul 14, 2009

Director Neil Jordan made his Hollywood debut with High Spirits, a supernatural comedy about ghostly happenings in an Irish castle.

Having won acclaim for his first three films Angel (1982), The Company of Wolves (1984) and Mona Lisa (1986) Irish director Neil Jordan got the opportunity to direct his first big-budget Hollywood film. Rather than heading for America, Jordan stayed in Ireland to direct High Spirits, a comedy about the owners of a castle trying to earn money from American tourists by fabricating ghostly occurrences, only to find out their castle really is haunted.

Screen legend Peter O’Toole stars as Peter Plunkett, the owner of Castle Plunkett who is desperately trying to keep the creditors at bay. Together with his staff they construct an elaborate ruse to make money from tourists. A group of Americans arrive, including the downtrodden Jack (Steve Guttenberg) and his bitch of a wife Sharon (Beverly D’Angelo), Catholic priest Father Tony (Peter Gallagher), bimbo Miranda (Jennifer Tilly), cynical lawyer Malcolm (Martin Ferrero) and his obnoxious family.

Jack gets liquored up after an argument with his wife and gets lost in the castle. In an old dust-filled room he encounters the spirits of Mary Plunkett (Daryl Hannah) and her lover Martin (Liam Neeson) as they re-enact the moment of her death. Martin accuses her of cheating on him and plunges a knife into her. Jack thinks they are actors and applauds their performances, until they reappear and do the same thing again. The second time Jack gets in front of the blade, breaking the cycle and freeing Mary.

Jordan is fond of odd couplings; a teenager and a werewolf in The Company of Wolves, or an ex-IRA man and a transvestite cabaret singer in The Crying Game (1992), so a ghost and an American getting it on is fairly normal for one of his films. Peter has no idea the ghost of his father (Ray McAnally) regularly appears to his mother (Liz Smith) and givers her updates from the other side. The spirit world though is concerned with this interaction between the dead and the living and the possibility of losing their ancestral home.

Neil Jordan admitted in an interview with Mario Falsetto ('Personal Visions: Conversations with Independent Film-makers') that he lost control on High Spirits. Originally intended as a small, gentle movie about an Irish con-artist selling ghost tours, High Spirits became a big, noisy Hollywood production. The studio previewed an unfinished version of the film and essentially removed Jordan from post-production. It is still possible to see what Jordan hoped High Spirits could be amongst all the chaos onscreen. Anton Furst’s set design is beautiful and George Fenton provides a fine score, but the film is too frenetic and becomes tiresome long before the end.

The copyright of the article High Spirits - A Neil Jordan Film in Comic Films is owned by Kevin Sturton. Permission to republish High Spirits - A Neil Jordan Film in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.