John played fast and loose with what he calls a Ghost Movie claiming that he couldn’t think of that many good ones. I disagree. Harvey is not a ghost story, even if it is one of my favorite movies.

Basically I don’t think there are ten great ghost movies, as the genre is inherently ridiculous, and I’m not aware of ten great ghost movie spoofs. So for my list I have taken the liberty of expanding the definition of ghost to include not only a disembodied formerly living being, but also a psychological projection (which, after all, is what so-called ghosts really are) — and also to include situations where a dead being haunts the action of the flick like a ghost. If this definition is too liberal, please feel free to junk my note. Yet I think the validity of my liberal definition tends to be proven by the fact that coming up with even ten films to fit it is still going to be a hard slog.

The Uninvited — Among the many reasons it’s the best of its kind is because of the presence of the mentally disturbed Gail Russell (who died very young) and which I think is only fitting, as all so-called spiritualistic phenomena is the result of psychological distress — that is, when it isn’t atrributable to either unexplained natural phenomena or simple human fraud.

The Innocents — A disappointing rendition of a Henry James story, but still better than just about everything else in this wretched genre.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir — Not a great movie, but still better than most in this genre.

Rebecca — Hitch’s first Hollywood picture and one of his best, includes a superfluity of gothic trappings, and shows the haunting effect of the dead upon the living. It also illustrates the idea that the evil that men (and women) perpetrate in this world lives on after them. If you consider this a ghost story, then this is probably the greatest of them all as far as the big screen is concerned.

Keeper of the Flame — Tracy and Hepburn’s strangest movie, which like Rebecca also shows the effects of the dead upon the living. There is also a political lesson in there concerning the inherent fascism of the so-called elite, a lesson for which most Americans, alas, remain clueless to this day.

Harvey — Harvey = psychological projection = ghost.

An American Werewolf in London — If you can make the stretch into thinking that the undead might be ghosts, then this is a very entertaining flick, whatever genre you might happen to label it w/.

Citizen Kane — As in Rebecca and Keeper of the Flame: a dead dude continues to freak the living. Kane’s a ghost story, dude.

The Seventh Seal — If the grim reaper isn’t a ghost, then what the heck is he?

Hold that Ghost — All I know is that it beats the heck out of Ghostbusters.
. .

There are probably two ghost comedies I could use to fill out my list to ten — Ghostbusters not being one of them — but I can’t think of them.