Kevin Coughlin
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FULL WATCHALONG ~ HIGH SPIRITS
🕑 Added 2025-06-01 04:00:18 +0000 UTCHigh Spirits (1988) is what happens when you gather a cast of absolute ringers—Peter O’Toole, Daryl Hannah, Steve Guttenberg, Liam Neeson, Beverly D’Angelo—and toss them into a haunted Irish castle comedy written and directed like everyone was doing tequila shots between takes. It’s a ghost story. It’s a rom-com. It’s a slapstick farce. It’s… a mess. But an earnest, chaotic, glow-in-the-dark mess.
The premise is actually gold: a cash-strapped innkeeper (Peter O’Toole in full unhinged mode) fakes a haunting to drum up tourist revenue, only for actual ghosts to show up and complicate things. Guttenberg plays a meatloaf of a man on a doomed marriage vacation, only to fall for Daryl Hannah’s ethereal ghost bride, because of course he does. Meanwhile, Liam Neeson—yes, that Liam Neeson—is the ghostly ex with rage issues and a wig that deserves its own SAG card.
The movie’s tone swings harder than a poltergeist in a chandelier. One moment it’s gothic horror lite, the next it’s horny Scooby-Doo with fog machines and accidental innuendo. The practical effects are pure late-80s charm—stringy ectoplasm, glowing green spirits, and wires you can almost see. The humor? A mix of dad jokes, bedroom farce, and whatever Steve Guttenberg thinks is sexy (spoiler: it's not).
But buried under the ectoplasmic chaos is a genuinely sweet little message about love outliving death, and how maybe the dead just want a little attention—and possibly a romantic subplot with an American tourist.
High Spirits is uneven, weirdly horny, and tonally drunk, but also kind of delightful in that “we don’t make movies like this anymore” way. It’s like if Clue, Beetlejuice, and an episode of Love Boat got trapped in an Irish castle during a thunderstorm and decided, “Screw it, let’s just film something.”
