Ghost Town (1988)
What's It About?
When a runaway bride goes missing in the Arizona desert, a Sheriff's deputy goes off in search of her. He stumbles upon a derelict western town haunted by the spirits of those who lived there long ago including an evil outlaw named Devlin whose reign of terror continues to the modern day.
Is It Any Good?
As with most Empire Pictures films this movie is good with an asterisk. It was clearly made for as little money as possible. I would say that Charles Band knew of somebody who owned a ghost town in Arizona then hired a few actors spent a couple grand on costumes and make-up and said "let's make a movie."
Ghost Town is sort of an ass backwards Army of Darkness. Instead of charisma factory Bruce Campbell we have adequate leading man Frank Luz, instead of an army of evil skeleton warriors we've got some regular looking outlaws that apparently can't be killed, and instead of Bruce Campbell in heavy make-up we've got Jimmy F. Skaggs in heavy make-up.
The movie's enjoyable but it spends a good 45 minutes being boring before anything really interesting happens and then another 15 being only mildly interesting. The finale is pretty great so long as you temper your expectations and realize that the ending will be climactic but not particularly big.
The actors are good, the sets look good, the movie is very professional looking and polished, and David Scmoeller's script seems to be solid but the movie still falls short due to an obviously low budget and a most-likely short shooting schedule. It's good, but not that good.
Watch, Toss, or Buy?
Watch it.