Ghost of Goodnight Lane

source: Ghost of Goodnight Lane

At first I wanted to shut it off because it was so random and looked like a Ron Jeremy low budget after-school soft mild porno only 12 and 13 yo boys would rush to their tree houses to sit around talking about and taking turns "holding " the movie. Just to get close to maybe a side boob. Then someone said it was supposed to be funny.... so I restarted it with a different perspective and WaLah it was a comedy Billy Zane made with the change out of his pockets by pulling his car over by the studio had random people get in the shot and improv the scenes therefore writing it in about an hour...

This is actually a very good high comedy, much misunderstood by many of the reviewers here. You're not supposed to take it that's seriously, it does what it says on the can:)

So, this terrible piece of garbage is what happens when the director is also the writer, producer, an editor, and gives himself a cameo in his own picture. There is no one to tell him exactly how bad of a job he's done until it's too late. The cast is decent, and the movie made me feel sorry for them. Two things came to mind. Either they were friends of the director and decided to do him a favor by appearing in his insanely low-budget and badly written film, or they were hard-up for money. Either way, 'Ghost of Goodnight Lane' manages to taint the careers of everyone involved. The ghost's story is ridiculous and even manages a tie-in with Charles Manson, because why not? Aside from that, the ghost has so many powers - too many powers - and they keep changing. The characters are equally as uneven. Billy Zane's character behaves in a way that makes him seem pretty naive and useless as a film producer in the movie. While his crew is being slaughtered - or rather slaughtering themselves - he just keeps on with his picture like it's the most important thing that needs to be done right then. I honestly wanted to gouge my eyes out as I forced myself to sit through this monstrosity. Fortunately, the ending with the director's cameo satisfied that craving. Don't waste your time with this film. The only purpose it serves is to turn me off of watching anything else that the director has ever made or will ever make. Billy Zane - what happened, dude?

I'm not adverse to B-movies so I found myself pleasantly enjoying THE HAUNTING OF GOODNIGHT LANE (aka GHOST OF GOODNIGHT LANE), a 2014 cheese-fest from Dallas. This one's about a film crew shooting in a creepy old run-down studio that turns out to be haunted by the spirit of a young woman with murderous intentions. It's a film that plays up the comedy just as much as the horror and because of that I think it works quite well. Billy Zane is the big name here and he plays a laconic, laidback, wisecracking director and I thought he was a hoot with his one-liners; Richard Tyson and Danielle Harris are some other familiar faces. The CGI effects are pretty poor and the whole thing is rather generic and cliched, it has to be said, so not for all tastes, but I did enjoy it regardless.

I personally enjoyed this rather messy supernatural flick. Lots of good death scenes and plenty of gore to spare. Billy Zane was horrible in this movie, but the rest of the cast were great. An evil ghost kills off a group of people trapped inside a eerie film studio that is connected to a haunted house where violent murders occurred.

An independent movie studio connected to an old house with a history of violence is tormented by the vengeful ghoul that insists her home is not bulldozed over by other potential buyers. The head honcho of the studio (Billy Zane, who mostly looks bored and disinterested, with less-than-subtle hints of sarcasm in his performance towards the project he's stuck in) plans to finish his latest project then sell off the house with plans to move to a brand new studio but when the ghost of bad little girl Carly starts raising a violent, psychopathic ruckus, he might just have to consider. Zane's cast and crew will also be under siege and terror, attempting to escape but unable to do so, some meeting horrific ends, others trying to "negotiate" their way out of the place to safe freedom. Decent cast (the aforementioned Zane, Lacey Chabert, Matt Dallas, and Danielle Harris) is really trapped in a bad horror movie with variable special effects (primarily laughable) and some okay dark humor. The film can't escape a putrid low budget, and the cast running around a studio attempting to find safe haven from a ghoul (that pales in comparison to the Japanese Onyro ghouls so popular about ten years ago) that isn't all that scary doesn't help. There are some eerie dolls in a room, a nasty bit of business involving a mirror slashing (the ghoul can "manipulate" people into harming / killing themselves), and Zane trying to talk the ghoul into leaving them alone has a bit of funny to it. Harris is too good to be stuck in parts which do nothing with her and too often these days she is…this film especially wastes her talents. Chabert keeps on a serious face as does Dallas (as the put-upon rookie, placed with doing multiple duties due to the crew losing their head editor (B-movie vet, Richard Tyson) in the opening sequence), her lover, but the plot is anything but worthy of a straight performance…the content and effects accompanying it leave much to be desired. This is fit for syfy and that is not a compliment. I think Zane knows what kind of crap this is and his performance doesn't hide that fact. Carly's mother's back story is even linked to Charles Manson! Christine Bentley services the film as some nice eye candy in scantily clad outfits (she *almost* gets * for a shower sequence) as Zane's "star" and Allyn Carrell is the creepy old lady with a story to tell and secrets to unveil. One truly funny and odd scene has Carrell just appearing and walking throughout the studio as Zane (and his kooky crew member Johnny (Adam Whittington, a very realistic loser)) is bewildered at how to get her to leave. The back story involving Jeanie and Carly's reasons for acting out are particularly weak but the film probably couldn't have made it out successfully regardless. Lynn Andrews III is the token black character (he is over the audio/sound department of the studio)who actually makes it out alive, but not without a few bumps and bruises.

Alan (Billy Zane) is the director of a low budget indie production. The editing of the film is set in a studio located in a haunted house. One of the scenes has to be reshot which requires the dancers to come back. The ghost scenes were done very well, but the dry one liners spouted by Billy Zane kept this film from having a great scare factor, instead it had a decent comedy value. While this film was in no way a spoof, it did seem to spoof the genre in general. The worse part of the film was it didn't tie in to the woman's warning that "childish games can turn ugly." There was an implication there was a hide and seek game turned bad, but that was not the case as childish games were never part of the flashbacks or the film. They needed to tie that together, but didn't bother. In spite of that, this one is a keeper. F-bomb. Nudity.

Billy Zane plays the director of a music video, which is filmed in a studio that used to be the home of a girl, who is now dead. Her ghost is haunting the place, and Zane talks his sound techie into keeping quiet about it for fear of losing his crew. As the story proceeds, we are introduced to his crew and actors, many of whom are there to be kill bait for the malicious ghost. This was much better than I thought it was going to be, and it was done in a tongue-in-cheek manner. I like the twist towards the end where we find out about Charles Manson's (yes, the serial killer) kid. I found the movie surprisingly fun. It's not great, probably not even good, but it was entertaining. The special effects were nothing to brag about, but considering the budget was probably low, the effects weren't bad. Boobs, butt, blood, and gore are in this. There's plenty of gore to go around, though they didn't go crazy with it. Christine Bentley gets naked for a shower scene, and later, she is forced to stick her face into a fan, chopping it off. Billy Zane is hilarious. He can't get Laurel's name right. He keeps calling her Lauren. Lacey Chabert has become a really good actress, however,- as I said earlier - this is done in tongue-in-cheek fashion, so don't expect an Oscar worthy performance. Danielle Harris looks a lot like Chabert - they could be sisters. She does a good job on her role as one of the dancers who becomes possessed by the ghost. Christine Bentley has a hot body...it's even hotter in the * scene. Overall, she's brought into the movie to be the big-boobed, blond sexpot. I gave this a 5-star rating because it was funny, entertaining, and it didn't hurt that the girls were hot. Oh, it was also somewhat original, as I've never seen a movie that had a ghost haunting a studio, not that I can remember anyway.

So I thought I might get some laughs tonight and check out a horror comedy... disappointingly I got not much more than a handful of slight grins from this dull piece of work. While the acting is good, the effects are passable without evidently requiring much of a budget (if they had a real budget then shame on them), and the characters are not bad, it just doesn't have anything special to offer. In fact, the whole thing is stock... run of the mill... ho hum. Plot, dialog, pretty much everything is clichéd, but not in that meta sense where it is playing off of it for irony or even... gasp, humor. Therein lies the biggest disappointment, and I already said it once but I will repeat it... it just isn't very funny. Nor is it a really good horror. It does succeed in setting up a few creepy scenes... not really scary scenes, just creepy, but they, as stated, are not innovative. It has some okay deaths, although, again, they are not innovative. It has a basic plot with only the slightest variance from what we have pretty much seen a hundred times before. You would think with all the effort it takes to get the funding this movie must have needed, and to get the decent cast it has, someone might have really taken the time to have a better script. It is not a terrible movie by any means... there is a bit of skill involved here. If you don't expect anything going into it you might find it mildly entertaining. A mindless way to pass some minutes away. But if you go into it with any higher hopes than that, well...