Amazing World of Ghosts (1978)

Amazing World of Ghosts (1978)

Rare experimental documentary directed by Wheeler Winston Dixon.

Though the title of TAWofGhosts suggests that the subject matter of the movie is ghosts, it is actually an omnibus documentary about everything unexplainable--ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs, pyramid power, etc. Kind of, anyway. I say "kind of" because the film manages to be about all of these subjects and none of them at the same time. All these provocative subjects are mentioned, yet none really discussed. The entire film is narrated by a very serious male voice, ominous tones in his voice at all times.

It seems as though Wheeler just took a variety of public domain footage, edited them together at random, and then wrote a narration to fit whatever came out. We go from ghosts to aliens to ESP to monsters with no rhyme or reason and a virtual absence of any kind of logical transition. For example, we will have just seen an odd segment on ghosts and then suddenly the narrator will solemnly intone something like "The vast reaches of space contain many mysteries" as we are treated to "animated" shots of galaxies and planets which were obviously achieved by moving the camera across the pages of an astronomy textbook. Another favorite segment of mine was actually was about ghosts (sort of). Wheeler shows us footage of kids playing in the streets of an Andean village (I think). They children are running around in circles, laughing and playing with a milkgoat that's hopping around. The narrator explains to us (as horror music plays in the background) that the children are being chased by the many ghosts who terrorize the village (maybe he really meant "goats"). Then Wheeler cuts to a shot of an elderly villager who is staring vaguely off camera, doing nothing. The narrator says, "But what causes these evil spirits to plague the villagers? The old man knows..." (the old guy keeps staring) "...but he's not talking." The film is low key chaos defines. Wheeler does impose ONE structural element, however. Every 15 minutes or so, no matter what subject was supposedly being covered--devil worship, aliens from space, whatever--the narrator simply say "But what of ghosts?" and we'd be on to some vague ghost segment.