Oh, good evening dear ghosts!

Come in, make yourself comfortable. Tonight, on this first Halloween of my blog, I wanted to share with you a fantastic family film. I like horror films, I assure you, but Halloween is also for children and I have a particular affect with this film and I wanted to talk to you about it.

As you may know, I had a special childhood, moving from foster family to foster family. At 11 years old, the family I was placed with was far from ideal and let’s just say I found every excuse possible to be at school as early as possible and leave as late as possible. I spent countless hours in the school library. My homeroom teacher understood that my daily life at home was not very happy and therefore often recommended books for me to read after school. That evening, seeing me alone at my table reading, she asked me to accompany her to her class with Urban, her son who was also in the establishment to watch a film while she corrected homework. That movie was Casper.

I think it was the first movie I watched. Of course at the time I looked at him with childish eyes and then I was intimidated by Urban. I had a crush on him since I arrived at this school and it must be said that me, my hyper activity and my ability to concentrate at the moment were not made to stay in front of a film for a long time but this one I watched from start to finish, between 2 moments where I was ogling Urban.

Over time, I found other qualities in him, in the film not in Urban! And I wanted to share it with you. Sorry for this long introduction and enjoy reading.

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Casper, just a children’s film?

Throughout history, the concepts specific to fantasy cinema have always more or less had a universal dimension and therefore the possibility of addressing a young audience, right up to adulthood, if the message is not too stupid and well delivered. However, beyond the 1990s there are ultimately few examples of live family films, falling within the so-called horror or fantasy genre and which go a little beyond its pure recreational dimension, while providing a certain form of reflection. And who else to achieve this result than the Spielberg team?

It is with this in mind, dear ghosts whether you are belligerent or friendly, that I suggest you rediscover Brad Silberling’s Casper.

Synopsis :

We therefore follow the story of dear Casper, a kind ghost of a child, haunting the large and disturbing Whipstaff mansion, which recently fell into the hands of Carrigan. The odious and venal heiress is determined to seize a mysterious treasure supposedly hidden between the walls of the building, something made complicated by the presence of Casper’s uncles, a terrifying trio of tyrannical ghosts, hunting anyone who tries to enter their home.

Seeking to make friends to deceive a very lonely non-life, the little ghost falls in love in front of the TV with the young Kat Harvey whose father, James Harvey is a widowed parapsychologist, specializing in the passage of wandering spirits to the afterlife. Unwittingly put in touch with Carrigan through Casper, the Harveys move to Whipstaff. After an initially difficult shock, a friendship develops between Kat and the friendly little ghost.

Meanwhile, these facetious and ghostly uncles have no intention of allowing themselves to be psychoanalyzed with impunity.

What is Casper ?

Well, I warn you from the start, there will be no question in this post of making you swallow that the Casper released in 1995 is a grandiose fantasy film or whatever. Above all, it is a brave little piece of entertainment without any pretension, aimed at a young audience.

Except that, it must be recognized that Brad Silberling’s very first feature film has since obtained the status of cult film for an entire generation and an unmissable feature of the Halloween season, during which Casper often tops the list of films to see for his evening. No offense to the cynics, this is not just a simple question of nostalgia.

Digging a little further, we notice in Casper a whole dimension of technical know-how, of cinema history, a bit of avant-garde and even more surprisingly, an “authorizing” touch that implicitly conveys themes that are rather serious, adult and very personal to its director. A director who made Casper a film that was actually much superior to its original model. He thus became, somewhat unintentionally, the last somewhat ambitious representative of his species.

Obviously a little contextualization is necessary.

Casper’s origines :

Casper is a film adaptation of Casper the friendly Ghost, a character created by Seymour Wright and Joe Oriolo (the designer of Felix the Cat). Initially envisaged to be the hero of a children’s book, Casper was finally sold to the animation department of Paramount and would be the subject of different cartoons for cinemas between 1945 and 1949.

“Casper the Friendly Ghost”, “There’s Good Boos Tonight” and “A Haunting We Will Go”, the success was such that it led to the publication of several comic book titles at Harvey Comics, (hence the last name of the heroes of the films). And a myriad of animated series still to this day.

The principle of an episode is always the same, from one to the next, Casper, a lonely, melancholic and unsuitable little ghost, unlike his colleagues, does not want to scare people. He wants to make friends instead. He roams everywhere, tries approaches, terrifying absolutely everyone in the process until a good soul, whether human or animal, discovers a kind companion in him. Which will lead to a multitude of often rockin’ adventures and a happy ending.

This repetitive structure, if not the prerogative of all Casper series, nevertheless remains a fairly regular constant, often criticized by specialists in the cartoon format. Casper himself binges through an episode of his own series as if Casper himself binges through its source material.

Silberling’s feature film manages not to repeat this error. The format of the cinema film is necessarily, in this sense and on the other hand it still manages to respect the origins and the specific medium from which it comes, namely the cartoon spirit.

The story of the filming

Let’s continue with a little history, if you like. Motivated by the recent box office successes of the adaptations of “The Flintstones” and especially of “Richy Rich”, another hero from the Harvey Comics catalog, Capser was launched on the initiative of Steven Spielberg via his company, Amblin and distributed by Universal. A collaboration which led to classics such as “Poltergeist”, “The Gremlins”, “Back to the Future” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, a deliriously meta film with a half-cartoon universe and precisely, the writing of the screenplay was entrusted to the duo of authors Sherri Stoner and Danna Oliver, then in touch with Spielberg on the writing of the animated series “Tiny Toons”. The duo also considered the project as animation, which pushed the producer to entrust them with writing the script.

Funfact : In terms of animation Sherri Stoner served as a model for the Disney studio for the animation of Ariel or even for Belle in “The Beauty and the Beast”!

The production of Casper almost fell into the hands of Alex Proyas, who was then successful after his film “The Crow” but he refused. Ultimately it was debutant director Brad Silberling who was entrusted with the baby by Steven Spielberg, impressed by the direction of an episode of the television series Brooklin Bridge.

It is a choice which may seem surprising at first glance but which will be decisive on the symbolic and dramatic aspect of the film, but we will come back to that later. In the best possible way Steven Spielberg surrounds Brad Silberling with the crème de la crème of the best craftsmen and technicians then in vogue in entertainment cinema necessarily drawn from among his regular collaborators:

• Din Cudney on photography, also a regular collaborator of John Carpenter
• The editor Michael Khan who in 1975 also edited “The Devils Rain”.
• Leslie Dilley, production designer on the first Star Wars trilogy, no less!

Dilley will be in charge of constructing the magnificent set of the Whipstaff mansion, built entirely to scale in the studio and in which three-quarters of the film’s plot takes place.

A small note : A particular detail of the architecture of this haunted mansion seems quite interesting to me, beyond the fact that its aesthetic is inspired by the work of the Catalan Gaudi, we notice in the vestibule a vast spiral pattern which we also find on the ceiling of Kat’s room, initially Casper’s. A form of frozen swirl which somehow evokes both an entrance to paradise when it is on the ceiling and a passage to hell when it is on the ground. Marking the space represented by Whopstaff as a sort of purgatory stuck between the two where ghosts wander without being able to reach one or the other place.

Moreover, the fact that Casper’s evil uncles, during their first appearances, emerge from the spiral of the vestibule to terrify Dips and Carrigan, clearly gives them the air of infernal demons. This is just a personal interpretation but I think it holds up.

Another funfact : this famous vestibule will be recycled in a Backstreet Boys music video – Everybody

A film for children but not only.

And the combined talents of all these little people contribute to offering this film for young people, today necessarily modest in appearance, a dimension of cinema that is basically very classic and artisanal. And this love of cinema is found via countless easter eggs and classics, sometimes discreet, sometimes strong and not necessarily aimed at the young audience to whom the film is nevertheless supposed to be aimed.

I won’t list them because I think it’s a pleasure to discover them if you haven’t already seen the film, but know that there are really a lot of them.

Casper therefore attempts to satisfy both the general public and more purist spectators. In a way, parents who take their children to see the film in theaters will also find something to their advantage.

In addition to this traditional approach in its design, Casper enters cinema history as being the very first film to feature protagonists entirely composed of computer-generated images. Which places this film in a sort of “between two” like the ghosts who haunt its story.

The cast :

We find to play Kat, Christina Richi, who if she remains in the slightly spooky fantasy, embodies a classic teenager, the complete opposite of Wednesday Addams in the films of Barry Sonnenfeld

To embody the deliciously histrionic villains we find Cathy Moriarty to play Carrigan and, more surprisingly, the English actor Eric Idle, former member of the Monty Python troupe in the role of Dips, Carrigan’s assistant and sufferer.

However, it is around two characters in particular that the entire narrative and dramatic framework of the film will revolve, taking the form of a reflection on death, memory, mourning. A symbolism which is of course embodied above all around its title character Casper.

Two actors will play Casper, first of all the young Malachi Pearson who will be present on the set for a good part of the filming to give live responses to his playmates. And to play Casper in human form we find Devon Sawa who became a small icon of horror cinema by playing the hero of “Idle Hands” and playing in “Final Destination”.

Another funfact (again): Let’s focus on one plot point in particular. In any ghost story it goes without saying that a ghost must have been alive beforehand and believe it or not, this was never the case for Casper, who the creators originally envisaged as having always been a ghost. I suspect what you are thinking and you would be absolutely right. It is indeed completely stupid. This choice to offer Casper a past and a human life we ​​owe to a young screenwriter then entirely unknown and uncredited on the film, a certain JJ Abrahams.

If this approach greatly dissatisfies the rights holders, it gives the feature film a large part of its symbolism and among its most emotionally charged scenes. The character of Casper seems accompanied by both notions of blur and light, curiously evoking the motif of a light bulb, provider of both light and darkness, an object in between.

More importantly, the second character, Doctor James Harvey, played by Bill Pullman, returning to fantasy after playing the leading role in “The Serpent and the Rainbow” by Wes Craven, the actor embodied the reflection of the director and his deepest anxieties. It’s a bit the same thing in Casper for Brad Silberling.

Casper a film with a soul.

In 1989 Brad Silberling, who was then beginning his career on television, was in a relationship with the American actress Rebecca Schaeffer, who died the summer of that same year, murdered by a stalker. A notion of suddenly lost love and trauma that we find in the character of James Harvey. He seems to have thrown himself headlong into tracking down ghosts so as not to face the disappearance of his wife and the responsibilities of a father that fall to him. This explains his incessant headlong rush across the country, in search of answers about life after death. An escape which ends for the character during a moving scene that I won’t spoil for you here.

By making his first feature film, Brad Silberling also seems to have turned the page on this immense personal tragedy. Following Casper, he will revisit the theme of loss in two other films: “City of Angels” and “Moonlight Mile” constituting with “Casper” a sort of trilogy on mourning.

So Casper a simple children’s film?

Allow me to doubt it. Accompanied by the cream of cinema of the time, Brad Silberling actually transcended his initial subject and made a simple commission into a cinematic plea of ​​very charged substance. Entertaining above all but above all sincere by even slapping his model. Family horror cinema like that, personally I would watch a little more. Don’t you?