Classic Horrors Club

When I was young, I had one of those leashes with wire threaded throughout the ropes so you could pretend you were walking an invisible dog. I couldn’t help but think of it when the characters in “The Deadly Visitor,” the final of our Classic Ghosts TV-movies, captured a ghost. I also couldn’t help thinking how cheesy it looked, while simultaneously thinking it was also kind of cool.

While that was a compelling component of the story for me, I was more intrigued by the main character, Jamie (Perry King.) While it would probably have been taboo in 1973, I’m certain he was gay. He escapes from his small home town to the big city so he can do anything he likes. He’s a writer who was ridiculed in school. Most importantly, as he repeats many times, he’s a man who can’t love anyone.

Don’t let the fact that he begins an affair with the landlady, Mrs. Moffat (Gwen Verdon), who’s 16 years his elder in the story (and was 26 years his elder in real life) fool you. That’s about the safest kind of chaste romance a gay man can have. Just watch how he acts and reacts with his friend, Virgil (James Keach) and another boarder, Mulvaney (Stephen Macht.) It could be wishful thinking; King is an awfully good-looking man.

Regardless, he’s haunted in his room, not just by a ghost, but a ghost that has some kind of physical, tangible form. When Jamie gets a grasp on it, and the others ask what it felt like, he says, “It felt soft, like skin.” (Then he immediately wonders if it’s a man or a woman.) He later sees an apparition of a childhood friend, Lucy (Ann Miles), standing in front of a mirror; however, he also sees an old man sitting at his desk.

Jamie is convinced this creature holds the meaning of life and, while Mrs. Moffat wants it removed from the house, he pleads for more time to discover the meaning, even if he’s damned for it. It’s not clear exactly how he’s going to do that, unless it’s from sitting by its bedside longingly asking it questions that will never be answered. The guys come up with a rather clever idea, though…

Virgil is a sculptor and when Jamie notices a plaster cast of someone’s face, he asks if they could get a cast of the creature. After they apply thick white gunk to an invisible body, they wait for the big brick to dry. Before it happens, though, it cracks open by itself. “It’s never done that before.” The plot point is dropped, so I don’t know if it means the creature escaped or if they just couldn’t capture what it really looked like.

Jamie decides to release it, not realizing the spirit is probably attached to the house and will continue to haunt it, no matter how kind Jamie may be. It makes a last-ditch effort to strangle Mrs. Moffat and attack Jamie. I don’t know if it’s fate or if Jamie set a trap for it, but the thing about a physical ghost, I guess, is that — SPOLER ALERT — it can be killed. This in turn provides The Classic Ghosts with its one happy ending.