AMAZING WORLD OF GHOSTS (1978)
Article 2521 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-28-2008
Posting Date: 7-7-2008
Directed by Wheeler Dixon
Narrated by Sidney Paul
Country: USA

Do you believe in ghosts? They’re out to scare us! They may come from outer space! See all mediums with ectoplasm coming out of their mouths – this doesn’t happen very often, but we have about a thousand pictures of it happening. Jupiter’s a big planet. What about Nessie, the Loch Ness monster? People also look for the Abominable Snowman, aka Bigfoot. This hypnotized guy can’t hear the drum music in the background! Because of the Gold Rush, many Ghost Towns were created. We’re all going to be invaded! Poltergeists throw things around and scare people. I’ll shut up now; play some electronic music to fill in the gap…

So far, I’ve seen several documentaries from the seventies about paranormal occurrences and/or extraterrestrial visitations. This one is the worst by far. Combine random stock footage with free-floating paranoia, stream of consciousness rambling and a short attention span and you end up with one of the most pointless explorations of… well, ostensibly it’s about ghosts, but with the way this thing wanders, who can tell? There are no interviews; it’s just Sidney Paul talking and the musicians filling in the gaps while photos and stock footage pass by. I’d say it’s unconvincing, except that for it to be unconvincing, it would have to at least approach coherent, and such is not the case. Really, I’m surprised it didn’t try to mix the Kennedy assassination in as well. One of my “favorite” moments; we see footage of a primitive town and its residents while the narrator intones about the town being infested by ghosts; we don’t see any, but we see plenty of goats, so maybe he was confused. Another: we see modern techniques for digging gold out of mountains, which proves that space aliens have vast underground cities on other planets just waiting for the chance to pounce on us all.