Woodyanders Cash strapped actor Warren McCloud (a likable portrayal by Jason Lively) and his struggling filmmaker buddy Fred (the equally engaging Tim McDaniel) find themselves in possession of a pawn ticket left to Warren by his grandfather. Said pawn ticket sends the duo on a wild ghost chase through Hollywood. Moreover, Warren and Fred are assisted by the wizened little old man ghost of the grandfather's Brit-accented butler Lewis. Director/co-writer Roland Emmerich relates the entertainingly goofy story at a steady pace and maintains an amiable lightweight tone throughout. The ever-adorable Jill Whitlow perks things up considerably with her cute and radiant turn as spunky actress Laurie. Paul Gleason does well as mean jerk studio head Stan Gordon and Leonard Lansink contributes a funny turn as Gordon's bumbling flunky Karl. Popping up in nifty bits are Chuck "Porky" Mitchell as huffy diner owner Mr. Rosenbaum and veteran character actor Larry Pennell as a booze-sodden bum. Karl Walter Lindenlaub's slick cinematography gives this picture a nice glossy look. The bouncy soundtrack and the groovy-bumpin' score by Joel Wachbrit and Hubert Bartholomae keep things bubbling along. Moreover, there's a good-natured easy'n'breezy quality to this movie that's impossible to either resist or dislike. The special effects are pretty cool as well. A pleasant diversion.

Wizard-8 "Ghost Chase" was an early effort by director Roland Emmerich before he moved onto big-budget Hollywood movies, and when he was turning out German-financed movies derivative of famous Hollywood movies. While this movie isn't as derivative as some of his other movies made at this time, you can still see influences, ranging from "Halloween" to "E.T." Actually, this unoriginality is one of the lesser problems I had with this movie. It's a pretty cheap-looking movie, for one thing, with poor cinematography and lighting. Much of the dialogue seems post-dubbed, and many of the special effects are tacky. And they apparently couldn't afford a decent-sounding musical score. But most of the blame falls on Emmerich's direction and script. Emmerich doesn't seem to know how to stage scenes many times (look at how the bicycle crash and the overpouring of coffee in a mug is filmed.) The script almost seems to have been written as the movie was filmed, with the plot taking forever to get going and then progressing at a sluggish pace when it's not being confusing. If you hate Emmerich's major Hollywood studio movies, take a look at this, and you'll see what real bad movie making is like.

Scott I was over at the local used book/CD/movie store the other day when my friend came up to me showing me this movie for sale for $2.50. He told me he was going to buy it because it looked really bad. "NO!" I said. "I'm the one who collects bad movies, I should be the one buying it!" He with held from my torment for a while, until I showed him where the Godzilla movies were. THEN he gave it up in favor of Godzilla vs. Mothra. "Haha!" I exclaimed, holding the movie over my head. "I have won!" Little did I know that this movie was the one who REALLY won.If you are reading this, it probably means you have rented or bought this movie, and you should be ashamed of yourself. How dare you support this movie with your hard earned money! The basis of this movie should have told you right away that this movie was a piece of crap. A group of film makers are struggling with production, when one of the kids (I mean "kids" literally, because these actors look as if they were only 17 or 18-years-old. None of them should be living on their own, making movies. They should be in high school.) gets called to the reading of a family will. He gets a bunch of junk left to him by his great grandfather. One piece of junk was an old clock that turns out to be housing the spirit of an old servant of the kid's great grandfather. And every time the clock struck 1:00 am, the spirit left the clock to roam his surrounding area. What I didn't get was why this spirit didn't do the same all of the other hundreds of nights he was locked away in that trunk. Well, the director of the films sees the ghost, and immediately after he wakes up, begins to construct a bunch of things that resemble what he saw when the spirit came into his room. He makes puppet about two feet tall, a scale model of a huge house, and writes a script for a movie based on his vision. My question, where did he get the money, and the know-how to make such detailed objects. The puppet is shown to have radio controlled eyes. What kind of a technological high school drop wizard is this guy who knows how to rig up remote sensor appendages? I don't know... On to the next "important" thing!Across town, another film maker (this one in his 30's) hears about the will reading, and orders a spy to steal the clock. The ghost appears again, scaring away the spy, and this time, he inhabits the puppet made by the director guy. This leads the ghost (I think his name is Lewis) to speak of the great grandfather and how he had lots of money, but he never gave it to anybody, rather put it in the basement of some house. So the kids spend the night roaming Hollywood in search of some house, trying to jog Lewis's memory along the way, because Lewis is a moron and can't remember where the house was.Well, they finally find the house after a girl recognizes the house in one of the older movie maker's movies, only to find out that the older guy is going to blow it up for the grand finale of some movie. They sneak into the closed set, end up in the basement of the house and are about to break into a wall, when the ghost of the great grandfather shows up, inhibits a suit of armor, and begins battling the kids. One blow and the armor falls apart though, but it somehow reassembles itself, and begins to exact it's revenge. It puts the director kid on a bed of spikes, entraps the great grandson behind bars, and does something to Lewis, but Lewis can still talk, and he tells the director kid that the only way to defeat the great grandfather's ghost is to destroy the clock. So he does it and the house blows up with the kids inside it. They find the fortune, the director kid is upset because he lost Lewis, the old director is bankrupted because the kids exploit a fraud he committed back a few years ago, and to end the movie, they drive away in a limo with guess who driving?... Awww... it's Lewis... Everybody with me, Awwwww... Lewis is still alive. DAMN YOU LEWIS!!! Damn you back to the pits of despair you came from!!! And as you're on your way down, don't hang onto me for support, because I'm not giving any! Lewis doesn't deserve it!! This movie doesn't deserve it! The actors don't deserve it! Nobody related to this movie deserves it!All in all, this movie wasn't all that bad. The ending was what killed it though. I never liked Lewis. I wanted him to stay dead, and when I saw him driving that limo, I wanted to punch a hole through a wall. By far, the WORST ending I have ever seen. That is my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. Good day gentlemen...

Shawn Watson It's weird how the writer/director of such exciting blockbusters such as ID4 and The Patriot could create such a strange film. I'll try my hardest to recount the plot. Two ultra-cheap filmmakers (art reflects life) have a great idea for a movie and rope in an unwilling but attractive starlet and make up a Muppet-like monster based on the photographs of a long-dead grandfather's butler. A rival studio producer wants to blow up the grandfather's house as the climax to his big budget movie so the butler's ghost comes back to possess the Muppet doll to lead them to hidden billions in the cellar.It's not a bad film, by no means, it's quite cringe-worthy in places but inconsistently entertaining. There are no big name stars or SFX but that is made up for with bizarre plotting and storyline. This film is more in the style of Roland Emmerich in his Making Contact/Moon 44 days. But if he had the budget he gets these days who knows what this film might have ended up as. I give it 6/10 for weirdness, plot and defying convention.