Producer Herman Cohen is perhaps best known for the 1957 one-two punch of I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein, so he continued to ride the wave of teen-oriented horror as far as it would take him, which is about 15 minutes into The Headless Ghost.
The British pic focuses on three collegians — two debate team-looking dweebs and one meh Swedish girl whose boobs are so pointy, it wouldn’t surprise me if the brand of her bra were Isosceles — touring a supposed haunted castle. And it is, which they discover when they hide ever-so-sneakily past closing.
Then and only then do the spirits of the royalty leap from their paintings and converse with them. One of the ghosts is — and, oh, I do so hope the title of the film didn’t spoil this for you! — without a head. In order to bust an ancient curse wide open, he sure could use that noggin. The payoff scene finds the headless body running around like a loon as his melon hovers overhead.
The whole thing is over in an hour, yet you won’t remember much past the cartoon credits and a hot bit o’ belly dancin’. Harmless but hopeless, it’s one of those things that sets out to “wacky” and makes corny jokes. You half expect it to be laden with on-screen sound effects like ye olde Batman TV show. Actually, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. —Rod Lott