It has been brought to my attention that Italian Director Lamberto Bava is a great director of horror films.  I have done and gone put what is recognized as his penultimate works ‘Demons’ and ‘Demons 2’ in my Netflix cue to hopefully have proof of this since his first film in some fifteen years, ‘Ghost Son’, in anything but great.  But damn if star Laura Harring doesn’t look good, no, GREAT in a halter top.  So good that I think I’m might have to recommend this awful film.

As the film opens we are creeping through a gothic looking home on the South African plains with ghostly music playing in the background.  Stacey (Harring) is taking a shower.  This is the first of many scenes in which director Bava seems totally captivated by the shapely form of his star, and I can’t rightfully blame him.  After Stacey gets out of the shower, she goes to the bed of her lover Mark (John Hannah) and gets naked again.  She hears a sound downstairs, and dispatches Mark to go check it out.  He decides to fix a broken lock on the door and is soon joined by Stacey who is now wearing panties and tight fitting tank top.  Now it may appear as if this whole review will be about the various means Bava concocted to display Laura Harring’s ample bosoms.  It won’t be, but they did play a rather significant part in this whole mess of a movie though.  With the lock fixed, they go back to bed and Stacey gets groped through the

tank top.  Check, we are a good fifteen minutes or so into this thing, and the only thing I can tell you about this film is that the character of Stacey has a solid rack. 

Well Stacey and Mark are really, really in love here in South Africa.  Stacey has decided to stay with her true love, leaving her job behind.  They have a young, weird house keeper named Thandi (Mosa Kaiser) who often talks to her dead mother.  Now back to Lamberto Bava, and I’m beginning to have my doubts about the dude, for real.  Mosa Kaiser looks to be about twelve years old, though she’s probably really about 28.  Her boobies are far too large for her tiny frame, which I found disturbing.  Especially playing a twelve year old.  If the film were better, I wouldn’t have time to notice minute details, but oh well.  Anyway, we’ve established that these two cats are deeply in love, so somebody has to die, and that would be Mark whose jeep has run off the road near the house.  The reason that the location of the jeep being near the house has significance is because this means the accident is close enough for Stacey, sporting a loose fitting sun dress and no brassiere, to jump on a bicycle and pedal away to the location with boobies a swaying.  By this time it has become obvious to me that this was not done on accident folks. 

Mark's dead, or at least kinda dead, because now Stacey sees dead people.  Mark is always popping up, reminding Stacey that she said she couldn’t live without him, forcing her to slit her wrists and stuff, and just being an overall troublesome poltergeist.  Lo and behold, Stacey is pregnant with Mark’s child and here’s when things get a little weird.  This child is born and starts doing things that babies probably shouldn’t do, like bite his mommy’s nipples so hard that they bleed, or fondle his moms breasts, or poke his mom with his erection while they are showering together.  Yo, I’m not making this up.  It seems that Mark has possessed the baby, which is why the baby… sigh… seems to have a constant hard-on.  You know the drill by now, as it’s a race against time against the evil spirit, yada yada yada…

‘Ghost Son’ was almost painful to watch.  Just the fact is was named ‘Ghost Son’ immediately brought back memories of the Bill Cosby classic ‘Ghost Dad’ which already starts the flick off two lengths behind.  There’s very little excitement happening, and considering that Bava has made his rep by being a horror maven, there are almost no scares to be had, which is highly disappointing.  The whole possessed baby thing was actually pretty funny as opposed to being scary.  Director Larry Cohen pretty much closed the book on the whole killer baby thing with ‘It’s Alive’ and ‘It Lives Again’ in my humble opinion.  And babies with erections?  This is in image I could have gone to my grave without imagining.

Back to Laura Harring, because really, this movie is all about her and her body.  And I don’t mean that in jest.  I’ve seen Ms. Harring in ‘Mulholland Drive’ so I know the former Miss USA 1985 can act, but she was simply awful in this crap.  She had absolutely no chemistry with the supposed man she was supposed to be sick in love with, and I’m sure she was frustrated that the director wouldn’t allow her to wear any support for her boobs.  I’m also willing to bet she had to hang a ‘do not disturb’ sign on her trailer door to keep Lamberto from constantly knocking on it.  To her benefit, how does one ‘act’ when getting poked in the chest with the erection of a baby?  I don’t think even Cate Blanchett could’ve pulled that one off.

Believe me, Laura Harring sure is fun to look at, even in nonsensical crap like this, but I still can’t recommend this movie based on her outstanding figure.  I can only assume that Bava, realizing his blunder in taking this project on, decided to focus on the two things that seemed to hold his interest throughout the production.  No, I’m not talking about plot and story.