Review of Haunted Honeymoon (1986) by Stuart K — 10 Aug 2010

Gene Wilder's 4th film as a director, and this was a film made on the fly in little over a month. It shows sadly, and the film ends up being more amusing than funny. It has a good cast, but unfortunately, they can't prop up the films shortcomings, despite having good ideas and slight gags, the film can never figure out what it wants to be.

Set in the 1930's, it has New York radio actors Larry Abbot (Wilder) and Vickie Pearle (Gilda Radner) who are engaged to be married, but Larry has been showing signs of nervousness since he engaged Vickie.

Larry wants to get married at manor house in upstate New York where he grew up. The head of Larry's mad family are Great-Aunt Kate (Dom DeLuise), who wants to leave the her fortune to Larry, but then during this stay at the house, nothing is what it seems, there's a werewolf, murders and supernatural goings on afoot.

The film seems to repeat alot of jokes from Wilder's directorial debut, The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975), and despite a cast including Jonathan Pryce, Peter Vaughan, Jim Carter and Bryan Pringle, some jokes work, some don't and the scares don't work either.

Wilder never directed again. Pity.