i haven't seen this POS for about 13 yrs, but i do remember the ending. i believe that the shot of the figures (side debate: the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker?) with the one's head chopped off is implying that one of the rafters is the killer, although i dont remember if they all survived (GOD, i hope not!). overall, i know that this movie was so horrible that it has stuck with my friends and me as "that HORRIBLE *beep* movie". i just checked it up on imdb to make sure that it was really a movie. god, i hate this movie
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thedavidlady
14 years ago
The earlier poster was correct; the shot of the decapitated figurines is indeed at the beginning of the film. But I can certainly see how someone might remember it wrong. Here's how it goes:
The movie opens with a (painfully slow) panning shot past a painting of a ship at sea and on to a chest or dresser with a clock and a set of three figurines who are clearly The Butcher, The Baker and The Candlestick Maker from the nursery rhyme. At this point all three of them are unharmed. Then we cut to a CU on the clock face, and the camera pans back to the figures to show the Butcher's little meatcleaver now has blood on it and the other two have been decapitated (one head is still rolling around a bit). Then the butcher figurine's eyes move. Why porcelain figurines would bleed is one of this dreadful film's many unanswered questions.
After the incoherent ending, in which a guy who says he's a sailor but looks like a cowboy shoots the offscreen killer, we see a final shot of the figurines. Only now, the Butcher has been beheaded too!
Pretentious and amateurish at the same time! What more could one ask for?
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jawsfan
14 years ago
Posted this in the other thread, this is what I've made of the ending.
My belief for the ending is that Charlie Winters was riding around, killing off ghost killers in the towns they haunted... think about it.
The first 2 figures are decapitated at the beginning, only one left... then when Charlie shows up, and shoots the invisible killer, it cuts back later to show the last figure beheaded. My personal thoughts on it.
I dunno about the old people though, maybe they were relatives of people on the trip.
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Katatonia
14 years ago
The "Captain" was the killer. It's explained as such in the DVD commentary at the end of the film, where it slowly pans up to his painted portrait and then down to the signature with the year 1891 on it.
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