Blackbeard's Ghost

A track coach arriving in a small seaside town takes a room in an old inn and, without meaning to, reads out a spell. Blackbeard appears: a cantankerous, incompetent ghost only he can see. To be released from his curse, Blackbeard has to do one good deed. The film is not interested in pirates. It is interested in help that does not help: the more the ghost tries to do good, the more he wrecks the coach's life, and everyone around concludes the man has lost his mind. The form is sixties Disney comedy: practical effects, invisible-hand gags and a fast finale. Its best-remembered passages are the race sequences built on a ghost nobody can see moving objects through the air. Robert Stevenson directed; he also made Mary Poppins. Peter Ustinov plays Blackbeard and balances the part between broad comedy and gravity, with Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette in the other leads. Who it is for: viewers who like classic Disney comedy and light fantasy to watch with the family. Who it is not for: anyone judging by modern effects. The tricks are visible and the humour belongs to the conventions of its day.