Haunted Honeymoon

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Haunted Honeymoon

Haunted Honeymoon promotional movie poster
Directed by Gene Wilder
Produced by Susan Ruskin
Written by Gene Wilder
Terence Marsh
Starring Gene Wilder
Gilda Radner
Dom Deluise
Jonathan Pryce
Paul L. Smith
Music by John Morris
Editing by Christopher Greenbury
Distributed by Orion Pictures
Release date(s) July 25, 1986
Running time 82 min.
Country United States
Language English
Budget $13 million
Box office $8,033,397

Haunted Honeymoon is a 1986 comedy movie starring Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Dom Deluise, and Jonathan Pryce. Wilder also served as the film's writer and director. The film also marked Radner's final appearance prior to her death of ovarian cancer in 1989.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Larry Abbot (Wilder) and Vickie Pearle (Radner) are radio stars in the Manhattan Mystery Theater who decide to get married. Larry has been plagued with on-air panic attacks and speech impediments lately since he proposed to Vickie. Vickie thinks it's just pre-wedding jitters, but his affliction could get them both fired. Larry's uncle, Dr. Paul Abbot, decides that Larry needs to be cured of his neurotic speech defect and exaggerated panic attacks. Paul decides to treat him with a form of shock therapy to "scare him to death" in much the same way someone might try to startle someone out of hiccups. Larry chooses the castle-like mansion located in rural upstate New York in which he grew up as the site for their wedding. There, Vickie gets to meet Larry's eccentric family: great-aunt Kate (Deluise), who plans to leave all her money to Larry; his uncle, Francis; and Larry's cousins, Charles, Nora, Susan, and the cross-dressing Francis Jr. Also present are the estate's butler, Pfister, and his wife, Rachel, the maid; Sylvia, Larry's old girlfriend who is now married to Charles; and Susan's magician husband, Montego the Magnificent. Paul decides this is the perfect opportunity to set his plan to "cure" Larry in motion and he gets the other family members in on the plan. Unfortunately for all of them, something else more sinister and unexpected is lurking at the Abbot Estates. The pre-wedding party becomes a real life version of Larry and Vickie's radio murder mysteries.

[edit] Cast of characters

[edit] Reception

The movie was a financial flop only grossing $8,000,000 in America entering the box office at number 8, then slipping to 14 the following week. While Gilda Radner was struggling with cancer, she wrote the following about the film in her book It's Always Something: "On July 26, [1986] Haunted Honeymoon opened nationwide. It was a bomb. One month of publicity and the movie was only in the theaters for a week -- a box-office disaster."[1]

Like many other theater "flops", however, it has grown a sizeable fan following due to home video.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Radner, Gilda. It's Always Something. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. p. 56

[edit] Trivia

Dom DeLuise's speech as he is coming down the stairs early in the film, "They were all godless here, all! They used to bring their women to this house, brazen lowly creatures, with their silks and satins. They filled this house with laughter and sin. Laughter and sin! Wicked men, blasphemous men, with their painted women! They reveled in the joys of fleshly love.....", was a partially direct quote from the classic 1932 James Whale film, The Old Dark House.

[edit] Awards

Dom DeLuise won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress

[edit] External links

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