Winchester; The Ghost and the Ghost

Back in 1958, Daryll Zanuck approached Alfred Hitchcock. Producer Zanuck wanted Hitch to direct a film about the infamous Winchester House in San Francisco, one of the most celebrated "haunted houses" in America.

Zanuck envisioned a film starring Vivian Leigh and Paul Newman and pitched the concept to both of them as well

They all refused. The movie was never made.

Sixty years later , Michael Sperig and his brothers decided to remake this movie that had never been made.

The Sperig brothers, writers and producers in the mold of the Warner Brothers came up with the idea after spending several weeks in Duxbury, Massachusetts where they discovered the Duxbury Dump. Duxbury is one of the more affluent areas on the East Coast. Duxbury is where the first wave of proseprous Pilgrims relocated after getting sick and tired of life in Plymouth.

The Duxbury Dump is fabled thoughout the East as the best dump in existence featuring a mall area and a library full of abndoned books. A time limit is enforced regarding "browse" time in the junkyard mall which is chock full of abandoned treasures many of which are headed to an imaginary antique road show.

In other words junk...but high class junk.

Inspired by the mall and the library, the Sperig Brothers decided that their next film would be a recapture of the Zanuck idea (which I admit, is imaginary) which he didn't pitch to Hitch or Paul or Viv.

So the Sperigs left Duxbury ( no they didn't.... matter of fact they had never been there in their lives. It may be apparent by now that this is a "ghost" story about a "ghost story", neither of which ever happened.

But the movie did happen. It's called Winchester. We saw it yesterday using Mary's ticket. Without the ticket I would have never gone to this film although Lynn might have gone solo.

If you're thinking about going to this film......forget about it because after you see it and even while watching it...you will forgwt about it. It's one of those movies that comes on teevee five years from now and you wonder "did we see that?'

It does have a gimmick,however. It's got Helen Mirren as Vivian Leigh playing Sarah Winchester, the heiress of the Winchester company, it's got Jason Clarke playing Paul Newman playing a doctor who is examining Mirre/Leigh in order to determine her ability to run the munition company. All of this takes place in the Winchester house an Escher like construction whose halls are full of jarring fake crescendos and closets full of pop out faces of people who met their deaths via Winchester rifles.

In other words it's a 90 minute browse through Duxbury mall. It's junk...yeah..but it's high class junk. Perhaps some folks will pick through the hackneyed debris and discover a gem.

I wasn't so lucky.

Sometimes junk is just junk, no matter who's shitcanning it.