Cult around Ghostkeeper has grown in the past 43 years

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All of it started with the resort.

Whereas there are some wonderful performances in Jim Makichuk’s 1981 cult movie Ghostkeeper, it could possibly be argued that the unsettling point of interest has at all times been Lake Louise’s Deer Lodge.

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The hulking constructing was first erected as a teahouse in 1923 earlier than changing into a resort in 1925. When a small solid and crew descended on the closed-for-the-season and unheated inn to shoot their movie in 1980, it required little embellishment to change into a creepy backdrop for a horror movie.

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Producer and co-writer Doug MacLeod had labored on the Deer Lodge and knew the household that owned it, which made it a possible useful resource for filmmakers desperate to make their debut function on the lowest potential value. Just a few years earlier, John Carpenter’s pioneering slasher flick Halloween had change into a shock hit regardless of its deceptively easy premise and low price range. So MacLeod and Makichuk, who knew one another as early members of the Calgary Society of Impartial Filmmakers, started toying with the thought of constructing a horror movie that required restricted settings and a small solid and crew. Within the grand custom of use-what-you-have filmmaking, Makichuk and MacLeod went with no matter they may get their palms on. Since an empty lodge within the snowy wilderness was obtainable, that grew to become the hook.

“I used to be conscious of it and its potentialities as a location,” says MacLeod in an interview with Postmedia from his dwelling in Canmore. “That’s what drove Jim and I to try to work out a narrative that could possibly be set in a single location at a time when it was successfully closed. In these days, it was very quiet up there in Lake Louise through the winter and we shot it previous to the ski season beginning.”

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So, in late November 1980, manufacturing started on Ghostkeeper with a small crew and handful of actors decamping to Lake Louise for the 20-day shoot. Makichuk and MacLeod’s screenplay revolved round three younger and reckless snowmobilers (performed by Riva Spier, Sheri McFadden and future Alberta Movie Commissioner Murray Ord) who discover themselves stranded at a seemingly deserted lodge within the wilderness throughout a blizzard. They ultimately uncover they aren’t alone and encounter a creepy caretaker (performed by Calgary theatre veteran Georgie Collins) and her equally creepy son. Quickly, the three hapless snowmobilers are up in opposition to a supernatural power, a creature the writers loosely primarily based on the malevolent Wendigo of First Nations folklore.

Mayhem ensues. There are traces of Halloween, The Shining and Texas Chainsaw Bloodbath to be present in Ghostkeeper, however the movie stands by itself.

Forty-three years later, it’s thought-about by some to be a cult traditional, praised for its eerie ambiance, expressive cinematography and comparatively delicate storyline.

It has been rediscovered by a brand new technology of horror buffs, significantly after it was launched on DVD for the primary time in 2012 and in a while Blu-Ray in 2017. On April 17, there shall be a free screening of the movie on the Globe Cinema as a part of Nationwide Canadian Movie Day in partnership with the Calgary Underground Movie Competition. MacLeod and Ord shall be among the many company attending the screening. 

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MacLeod says he doesn’t keep in mind what the precise price range was of Ghostkeeper however numerous sources have put it between $650,000 and $750,000, which made it a decidedly shoestring enterprise for these days. He additionally wasn’t concerned in getting traders for the movie, however Ghostkeeper is usually thought-about Alberta’s solely movie that was a part of the “tax shelter” period of Canadian cinema, a productive interval from 1975 to 1982 when the federal authorities would permit traders to deduct 100 per cent of their funding in Canadian function movies from their taxable earnings.

He was abroad making a business when Makichuk knowledgeable him that the funding was kind of in place. As is usually the case with Alberta, Mom Nature co-operated by offering knee-deep snow for the solid and crew to trudge by way of. Because it was closed, the lodge wasn’t heated. No post-production results have been required to see the actors’ breath as they spoke. As a result of it was low season, solid and crew have been capable of purchase comparatively low cost lodging close by and the lodge’s totally outfitted kitchen allowed everybody to eat their meals with out leaving the set. The price range was tight, and so was the timeline.

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“It was tenuous, you have been working from week to week,” MacLeod says. “It was simply ensuring you had sufficient to make payroll, that was the important thing factor. You needed to feed individuals and pay them and also you mainly marched on and also you by no means let up and also you needed to be tenacious to get the job achieved. Jim actually was, he understood the constraints. We did no matter we needed to do to get it achieved.”

Whereas making the movie might have been tenuous, those that labored on it keep in mind a jovial however skilled set, with Makichuk permitting each his actors and cinematographer John Holbrook loads of freedom to contribute concepts.

“We shot all the things in a single constructing, or inside 200 yards of the constructing, and we ate there for lunch after which all of us stayed in a resort not removed from Deer Lodge,” says Ord, who performed smug male lead, Marty. “We acquired collectively within the night with the crew as a result of it was a small crew and we’d have one thing to eat and a pair beers. So it was very collegial that manner as a result of there was nowhere else for any of us to go. No person lived there, together with the crew. So loads of occasions I’d be sitting down having a beer with {the electrical} individual and the gaffer and the grip or whoever it might be. I feel that actually contributed. Not solely was it skilled nevertheless it was extra family-like.”

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Ord knew MacLeod as a result of each had labored for Entry, Alberta’s academic cable station, within the Nineteen Seventies. Particularly, they labored on a program known as Scoop, which starred Ord as a journalist who would journey to Alberta colleges to get the “scoop” on numerous academic actions. He had gone by way of the theatre program on the College of Calgary, educated below improv guru Keith Johnstone and later joined a Victoria-based improvisational troupe. Earlier than Ghostkeeper, he had landed a number of roles, most notably a small talking half in Robert Altman’s Alberta-shot 1976 western Buffalo Invoice and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s Historical past Lesson. However to land the lead in a movie, even a low-budget indie film, was a dream come true for the actor.

It was additionally a plum gig for John Holbrook, whose cinematography was key to capturing the haunting vibe of the script. He wished to make use of Alberta’s pure mild as a lot as potential and didn’t need to usher in typical film lighting. Whereas contained in the Deer Lodge, a lot of the lighting was supplied by the kerosene lamps the actors have been carrying. It was an efficient gadget,  permitting Holbrook to seize an appropriately imposing darkish and shadowy look.

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“Once I learn the script, I noticed we didn’t have a lot of a presence of the particular (monster) … so I figured I needed to make this actually darkish,” Holbrook says. “To make it scary, there must be loads of darkish corners and darkish areas the place this monster could possibly be hiding. That’s the type of theme I went with, conserving it moody and darkish.”

In the meantime, Alberta’s mountain surroundings and blustery climes supplied a sure stillness that made for a chilling, dramatic backdrop for the movie.

“There was this spookiness,” Holbrook says. “There was at all times drifting snow off of the bushes. The wind would come up and it could blow these wonderful bits of snow and there can be this type of haze that might undergo the shot. It actually lent itself to the temper of the present. When it was cloudy, it actually had a spooky really feel to it.”

Whereas Ghostkeeper is probably not essentially the most beloved movie to come back from the tax-shelter period, it’s consultant of what the federal government was making an attempt to realize throughout that interval. The thought was to spice up the variety of movies made within the nation, which additionally resulted in younger filmmakers tackling extra commercially possible genres. However the tax-shelter period was not with out controversy. In some circles, providing such a beneficiant tax credit score to movies like David Cronenberg’s early gore-filled gross-outs like Shivers, Rabid and Scanners, as an example,  was a distasteful use of the general public purse. After all, all three of these films are actually thought-about classics. Some acclaimed movies got here from the interval, together with French auteur Louis Malle’s Oscar-nominated Atlantic Metropolis with Burt Lancaster, and British director Peter Medak’s The Changeling with George C. Scott, each from 1980. However it was usually unclear how these movies have been “Canadian” in any manner, apart from the very fact they have been made utilizing a beneficiant Canadian tax credit score. Quite a lot of movies made throughout that interval have been simply plain unhealthy. Many have been by no means launched.

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“It’s at all times been an issue for the Canadian movie business,” says U of C affiliate professor Charles Tepperman, who covers the tax-shelter period when educating Canadian cinema. “Are we attempting primarily to help business objectives or are we attempting primarily to help cultural objectives? The tax-shelter period raised loads of questions on that. Finally, an enormous variety of movies have been produced however a movie scholar as soon as estimated that about 40 per cent of the movies produced and shot in and round 1979 by no means acquired launched.”

Nonetheless, a lot of them – together with Ghostkeeper – maintain up. Whereas the movie most likely had a tenth of the price range of The Changeling, it’s nonetheless consultant of the interval, Tepperman says.

“It’s a movie that’s of the second as a result of it’s Canadians attempting to make style movies,” he says. “Like Cronenberg’s early movies, they have been seeing that making style movies as a option to an even bigger market, not simply Canadian audiences however a world viewers as properly. It’s a manner you can also make your identify. It’s nonetheless one thing Canadian administrators do, they make style movies and hope they’ll break into the business that manner.”

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Lots of these concerned in Ghostkeeper stayed within the business and loved profitable careers. Holbrook had an extended profession as a digicam operator, transferring on to movies comparable to 1982’s First Blood and educating on the Vancouver Movie Faculty. At 78, he nonetheless makes movies and music movies. MacLeod grew to become a busy producer and manufacturing supervisor, engaged on movies comparable to Superman III and tv initiatives like North of 60 and The Sheldon Kennedy Story. Ord continued to behave however ultimately moved behind the scenes as a producer and areas supervisor. He was president of the Alberta Movie Fee from 1996 to 2001 and co-founder of the manufacturing firm Alberta Movie Leisure, which helped deliver movies comparable to Brokeback Mountain and Brad Pitt’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford to Alberta. He nonetheless works in location administration. Just a few years again, he confirmed director Jason Reitman a number of areas in small-town Alberta that might ultimately be used for 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

Makichuk was 35 when he directed Ghostkeeper, having studied movie on the Banff Centre, Simon Fraser College and the College of Detroit. He had a vibrant profession in TV information and commercials earlier than turning his consideration to movie. His 1976 movie Cooperage gained a Genie for Greatest Quick and was a finalist within the 1976 Academy Awards. He ultimately moved to Los Angeles the place he labored principally as a screenwriter in movie and tv. He returned to Calgary in 2016 and is at present in long-term care. He wasn’t capable of take part on this article however spent years selling Ghostkeeper. He stayed associates with MacLeod, Ord and Holbrook and would maintain them knowledgeable about their little movie’s fortunes because it slowly grew to become a cult traditional.

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As for the Deer Lodge, it’s nonetheless there. Roughly 20 years in the past, Holbrook introduced his household to Lake Louise to remain on the resort. He says that engaged on Ghostkeeper was one of the crucial optimistic experiences he ever had on a set, however the creepiness he helped create inside these partitions continued to hang-out him.

“After we acquired in there, I mentioned ‘I can’t keep right here, it’s too spooky. I can’t sleep in right here,’” says Holbrook. “So we went some place else. We cancelled (our reservations). We have been making a spooky movie and my complete thoughts about it was ‘How will we make this factor as spooky as potential?’  I used to be scared to remain there.”

There shall be a free screening of Ghostkeeper on the Globe Cinema at 7 p.m. on April 17.

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