I present to you my Halloween episode of Film Chat Radio, featuring ghost guest reviewer Lisa who followed me home from the coffee shop because she is a fan of the show. Lisa’s going to give us a surprising perspective on the 1972 haunted house movie She Waits starring Patty Duke.

We also have an enlightening email from listener Brandon, with memories of The Redeemer being filmed in his hometown.

Thanks to Brandon and Lisa for making Film Chat Radio the place where everyone can be heard!

Listen below or scroll to read.

Good evening and thanks for tuning into Film Chat Radio here on WFCE in Moxey Bluff, where we always catch the late show. With me tonight is a ghost I mean guest critic, my new friend Lisa. Lisa and I met at the coffee shop and got to talking and it turns out she’s a fan of the show! So she’s gonna give us a few thoughts on the 1972 TV movie She Waits, starring Patty Duke, Dorothy McGuire, and David McCallum.

She Waits is a haunted house story that kind of borrows also from the movie Rebecca, with a man bringing his new wife to the house his deceased wife haunts, but there’s a twist in that nobody remembers the ghost wife fondly, especially the housekeeper! OK, Lisa, when I look at a movie about a haunting, I ask myself two things: why is the ghost haunting the house in the universe of the film, and what does that ghost represent outside of the film? So that’s basically, what does the ghost want, and what does the filmmaker get out of introducing us to the ghost? You can answer these questions or not of course, the mic is yours.

Thanks Erin. I’d like to say first of all that She Waits is a movie about a ghost who haunts her rmother-in-law’s house. It is not, as many summaries would have you believe, a movie about a new wife who comes to her mother-in-law’s haunted house. The ghost is named Elaine, and it’s still her house. She died there, she can’t seem to remember how, and she never moved out. But she doesn’t bear the new wife, Laura, any ill will, she just wants to be heard.

Elaine was an actress who met her husband, Mark, while she was doing theater on the East coast. So she moves to California with him, and she doesn’t remember if she tried to become an actress there. All she remembers, unfortunately, is what the other people in the house say about her. That she’s a “maneater,” and that she drinks too much. And then they claim she shot herself, but she knows that’s not true.

And by whatever rules there are in the afterlife, which as they say varies from manifestation to manifestation, Elaine can only communicate through sound at first. She replays the sound of what they claim is her favorite music box, and she cries, and she re-creates the sound of a desperate last phone call to plead with someone to ease her loneliness.

She is shocked to find that Laura is sympathetic, and this gives Elaine the strength she needs to just borrow Laura a little bit, just try her on like a new coat that doesn’t quite fit but that will keep you warm enough. Do you know what I mean? Maybe that’s not fair though. I mean, Laura willingly helps Elaine…I’m not good with similes, Erin.

Finally, Elaine is able to remember who killed her. And when the killer says it was an accident, well, maybe what happens to them is an accident too. The best part is that Elaine has proof of what was done to her in the strangest way, through a very specific bit of dialogue that indicates the killer would be just as happy to ruin Laura’s life as they did Elaine’s. And whatever everyone else thinks of Elaine, this means that she’s the heroine, she saved Laura from the killer. She knows it, and Laura knows it. Maybe all the ghost wanted was a friend. Like you and me, Erin.

And the filmmaker, the writer, all of those people, they might have wanted to say that you shouldn’t be a maneater, but you could turn that around and say that maybe men shouldn’t be so eager to serve themselves on a plate.

By the way, you mentioned the film Rebecca, but I think there’s also a reference to the 1944 film Laura here, and it’s not just the name. It’s how Laura in She Waits felt empathy for the memory of Elaine without having met her, just like Dana Andrews did in Laura. So combined with the great 40s actress Dorothy McGuire being on hand here in the 70s, I think the filmmaker just wanted to make a classic ghost story. I saw She Waits on TV when it first aired, and I can tell you it was better than a lot of things on TV in the 70s, whatever people might think today. Anyway, back to you Erin.

Wow, you saw this on TV in 72? You look so young! You must have been really young then. It’s no surprise you would have strong feelings about the film having seen it as a little kid. Well, thanks for such detailed thoughts, and I hope you come back to discuss the next ghost story we watch.

You can count on it! I’ve got nothing but time.

Alright folks we just have time for a listener email. Longtime friend of the show Brandon wrote in about our previous  episode on The Redeemer.

This was shot in my hometown of Staunton, VA. Some landmarks, like the Wright’s Dairy Rite, are still standing (and look pretty much exactly the same). The beginning and end of the movie were shot at a local reservoir, still there but now closed to the general public.

Staunton is also the home town of the Statler Brothers, who performed yearly on the 4th of July in Gypsy Hill Park. These were huge events at the time, even more so in the summer of the Bicentennial – the same summer The Redeemer was shot.

My personal canon conflates the two things in my head, as I distinctly remember locals discussing “the horror movie” at the 4th of July celebration that year. I was six.

And discussing this movie just reminded me that I have a set of original lobby cards for this movie. Four cards, and one of them is a close-up of the superfluous thumb, which is presumably the kind of thing that put the butts in the seats back then. You had four stills to sell your movie, and you went with the thumb.

Hey Brandon, that’s good information! Thanks for giving us some context. Every crazy regional film started life as a small town’s encounter with the excitement of movie making, and it’s important to remember that.

We’re out of time but thanks again to Lisa and Brandon for helping me out tonight, and thanks to all of you for listening to Film Chat Radio, where we all just want to be heard. Goodnight!