Ghosts of Goldfield (2007 Video) User Reviews

C'mon Rowdy Roddy, you can do SO much better

[movieman_kev · 2/10 · 16 July 2009]

Julie and her crew go down to the ghost town of Goldfield hoping to get some juicy stuff about the nearby hotel that's supposedly haunted by Elizabeth Walker, a young woman who had been killed after her wealthy guy found out that the baby she was carrying was not his own. The crew want to get video of her as she prowls the hotel's corridors looking for said baby, who was also murdered.

The big selling point for me in renting this film was the sheer fact the Roddy Piper was in it. Visons of past greatness such as "They Live", "Hell Comes to Frogtown" (and to a lesser degree "No Contest") danced in my head. I was kind of hoping to see a nice ghost story as well. Sadly this mess of a film accomplished neither as I soon sadly realized that Piper's character was dreadfully under-developed and left him nothing to work with. And the ghost story was predictable, trite, and above all dreadfully boring. Leave this one in the bargain bin where it belongs.

My Grade: D-

DVD Extras: a stills gallery; a trailer for this film; and trailers for "Dark Reel", "Baseline Killer", & "Carnivorous"

Very bad, stay away!

[parmenides6 · 2/10 · 15 April 2009]

The plot of this movie is the basic haunted house scenario. However it suffers from bad direction, a bad script, bad acting and bad special effects. The cast is relatively small and I only recognised two of them, Roddy Piper (They Live) and Marnette Patterson (Kaley Cuoco's sister in Charmed). Marnette can act and in my opinion is the only person in the movie who can. I would go into more detail but i wasted enough time watching the movie itself so I'm not going to waste any more.

This should be a 1 star rating but unfortunately and unbelievably I have seen worse movies than this, therefore I have to save the 1's for them.

Starts Off OK

[bullhead3031 · 3/10 · 6 March 2011]

This movie starts out OK, but then just fails to really do anything. I purchased the movie at the local Wal-Mart because I used to live just 27 miles north of Goldfield in the town of Tonopah, NV. I hope that this isn't considered a spoiler, but ALL of the interior flamings of the hotel in this film were not filmed at the Goldfield Hotel, but up the road in Tonopah at the now defunct, Mizpah Hotel. I know!!!!! I used to work at the Mizpah Hotel and it all looked very familiar to me.

The acting is barely mediocre in this film. Two pretty girls, one cute guy, and one hunk, along with Roddy Piper couldn't make this film shine. Five college students go to Goldfield, NV to study ghosts the closed Goldfield Hotel and spend the night there. I can tell anyone now that would never happen because Esmerelda County would never let anyone spend the night there. I don't believe that the hotel has actually had guests since the late 40's or early 50's. It may have opened up in the 70's for a short while, but I would have to check my facts.

Don't waste your money going out and buying this DVD. Wait for it on Sci-FI or a horror channel some long snowy afternoon.

Movie Grade-D+

Five teenagers trying to film a documentary about a ghost story.

[mldn · 1/10 · 20 April 2009]

It's like a really bad episode of the Twilight Zone (and I'm a fan of the series). Do not watch it. It's really not worth your time.

When the movie starts, you may even believe something good may happen later, only to fight your frustration against the bad direction, acting and special effects.

The idea is OK, a ghost story based on a haunted hotel on a ghost town in the middle of nowhere. The hotel even looks nice when you first see it. Thanks to an awful series of bad dialogues and an unexplained connection between the characters in the movie which remains unexplained even after the movie is finished, you will regret having wasted your time watching it.

Honestly, I love horror movies, but this one is not even scary... If you have a limited amount of time to watch movies and like to enjoy them, this one shall not be one of your choice.

The ghost stories you told as a kid were better than this!

[Wizard-8 · 23 April 2012]

I decided to rent this movie mainly because Roddy Piper was in it. In the past, he has appeared in some very enjoyable movies, and I thought this effort might be another one. Sadly, Roddy is not one of the main characters, and not only is he unrecognizable, he doesn't get to do that much here.

The rest of the movie is even worse. It appears that the movie only spent money on the digital camera and a few other technical pieces of equipment, because hardly anything resembling "production values" appears on screen. It just seems that the movie had access to a bar and an abandoned building, and wrote a screenplay that could use those locations without bringing in anything else. As a result, the movie looks extremely cheap, not helped by poor lighting and goofs like the shadow of the boom mike appearing on a wall in the background.

But what's worse is the extremely slow pace. It takes forever for the characters to realize they are in jeopardy, and once they realize this, they don't do the logical thing like get out of there.

In short, there is absolutely nothing here to justify giving the movie a look.

HORRIBLE

[BandSAboutMovies · 1/10 · 4 September 2020]

Sony sold the rights to the Urban Legend franchise and a fourth installment was planned, which would be this very film. Originally called Urban Legends: Goldfield Murders, the DVD sales of Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, Sony bought back the rights. That left this movie to be released as Ghosts of Goldfield.



Julie and her friends (which include Kellan Lutz, Emmett Cullen to those who enjoy Twilight) have set up their ghost chasing equipment in a hotel in the former mining town of Goldfield.

Supposedly, George Wingfield, the real-life owner of the hotel in that real-life town once had a relationship with a woman named Elisabeth Walker, who some claim was a prostitute and others a maid. When she became pregnant, he paid her to stay quiet but soon decided to get rid of her and her child. He chained her to a radiator and kept her fed until she died during childbirth, then threw the baby down a mine shaft. Visitors to the hotel report hearing her voice and the wails of her child.

Julie has a necklace that is a family heirloom which connects her to this tragedy. There's also a bartender - hello, Roddy Piper - who for some reason is still alive decades later.

This film is, charitably, a mess. It would feel right at home in today's shot for streaming found footage world of junk horror. Ed Winfield, its director, has one other credit: Oakland Raideretts Swimsuit Calendar Behind the Camera.

However, I am a completist, which means I had to watch it for you. My dream is that this keeps you from having to endure this poor entry in the franchise.

A very crummy and run of the mill supernatural horror clunker

[Woodyanders · 2/10 · 9 July 2009]

Five college students - sensitive Julie (Marnette Patterson, the sole decent actress in the film), nice guy Chad (Kellan Lutz), jerky Mike (Richie Chance), nerdy Dean (Scott Whyte), and bitchy Kerri (Mandy Amano) -- go to Goldfield, Nevada to make a documentary on ghosts. The quintet check out an old rundown hotel that's haunted by the angry and unrestful spirit of Elizabeth (ravishing Ashley Rae), who was murdered by her cuckolded husband George Winfield (Chuck Zito) a long time ago. Director Ed Winfield, working from an extremely talky, hackneyed and uneventful script by Dominic Biondi, lets the pace crawl along at an excruciatingly sluggish rate and fails to develop any much-needed tension or momentum. Moreover, the bulk of the characters are highly irritating and obnoxious chowderheads who elicit zero sympathy from the viewer. One quite simply doesn't give a fig whether these hateful tools live or die. The largely poor acting rates as another significant flaw, with Chance copping the grand booby prize for his profoundly grating portrayal of the grossly unappealing Mike. The lousy dialogue, consisting mostly of the usual profanities, is downright painful to hear at times. The grindingly predictable story doesn't help matters any. Ditto the generic shuddery score, chintzy (less than) special effects, tacky gore (the spurting blood looks like fruit punch), and lackluster cinematography. Roddy Piper is wasted as a gruff and unfriendly local bartender. The key problem with this film is that it's awfully slow and long-winded; the plot takes forever to get going and by the time the narrative finally peps up in the last third you're too numb with boredom to care. Worse yet, there isn't even any gratuitous female nudity to be seen during the token soft-core sex scene. Not even the downbeat ending can redeem this dud. A total wash-out.

Insultingly Bad

[cobbler88 · 3/10 · 26 October 2009]

I don't watch a horror movie looking for perfection. I look for a decent story that isn't screwed up by the actors or production staff. Unfortunately, pretty much everything that could have been done wrong in this film was.

First, lets talk about the group of five documenting hauntings in the abandoned hotel. Only three of the five were actually doing so. The two remaining hangers-on were the stock obnoxious boyfriend and slutty girlfriend - both of whom were so obviously ill-matched with their partners that it trumped all suspension of disbelief. There was simply no way either of the documentarians would have been going out with either of their mates.

Second, lets talk about shooting day for night. This is when a film is shot in daylight but manipulated to make it appear that the scenes were shot at night. At the very darkest it appears that the events in this movie occurred at around dusk. During other interior shots throughout the film it was clearly daylight outside because - duh - you could see the daylight through the windows. I don't believe a single exterior shot was actually filmed at night, and sometimes within the same scene the lighting would change from more red to more blue. The characters also inexplicably kept returning to what seems to be the basement of the hotel, which not only seemed to be a bit more haunted than the rest of the place, but also generally had daylight streaming down into it.

Third, how about doing at least a LITTLE research for minor points? This Nevada hotel was, to paraphrase, "one of the grandest hotels between Chicago and San Francisco. Now it sits abandoned off I-95." Can anyone tell me what is wrong with that sentence? Exactly! I-95 runs north-south from Maine to Florida. Would it really have taken more than 20 seconds to find a genuine interstate or state highway along which to place this hotel? Fourth, the ending is never explained and the viewer is left not really knowing why it ended as it did. I know this is often a device used by inferior film-makers to deflect criticism by reflecting it back to how stupid the viewer must be to not understand the film. Viewers too often fall into this trap, and sometimes with good reason. In this case, however, the nonsensical ending is yet another symptom of a horrible movie - not the viewer's inability to follow a story.

Even when looking for a low-budget horror flick to pass an October evening, avoid this one.

Absolutely atrocious to put it politely

[krystinapilkington · 1/10 · 29 June 2011]

The biggest problem encountered with this film is the fact that it actually makes no sense at all. If you choose to watch this pathetic excuse for a film you will be subjected to an hour and a half of painful dialogue, pathetic acting and terrible filming and still come out at the end none the wiser than when you began. It is in no way clear why they characters that are murdered are. It's a low budget film so naturally I expect bad shooting and poor acting. However, it costs nothing to think up a story that is actually consistent and makes logical sense.

In the initial scene at the 'saloon', which is meant to be 'unchanged since the 1800's', you can clearly see the bar owner leaning on a Fosters lager pump. Not really in keeping with the idea that this bar has not been altered in over two hundred years. Thankfully the director does redeem himself in noticing this mistake and removing the Fosters badge for the next scene! That's about the only congratulations I could offer to whoever thought of, and produced, this atrocity.

Life seriously is too short to waste on this film.

Bad horror movie

[wahmorris · 2/10 · 19 March 2010]

Aaron; the Goldfield Hotel really does sit on the I95 approx 170 miles north of Vegas. I know this for a fact because I lived in Goldfield for 4 years and spent a lot of time at the hotel.

I watched this movie because it was based on the Goldfield Hotel, however none of the interior was filmed there. It was filmed entirely inside the Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah, 26 miles away. It was much more fun watching the background, trying to see my old house, reminiscing with friends who I used to hang around the Mizpah with. I actually lived in room 109 of the Mizpah for a while(not the one on film, that was another part of the hotel). There are other discrepancies just with the location that it made it fun to watch.

If you are from the Tonopah/Goldfield area you should watch this! Most people are not from here and would not enjoy any part of this movie. The acting was terrible, the script was full of crap that no one actually says, the story was slow, you wait and wait for something to happen, ANYTHING to happen that I'd be surprised if you were still watching when they finally do something during the crappy last 5 minutes of this crappy film.

Urban Legend ... not

[kosmasp · 3/10 · 5 October 2021]

If I was actually curious I would check out, why this was originally intended to be part of the Urban Legend(s) cinematic universe (not sure if they'd have called it that back in the day). But I am not. Feel free to roam this page or the internet if you are curious, I give you my blessings.

Having said that, it was nice to see Roddy Piper and Marnette or Kellan Lutz. They still do not make up for the insanity you are about to witness. Although in one case it works in favor of the movie. That is the sex scene - or rather the aftermath of the sex scene. While the obvious dubbing of the moaning is already funny (and surely not intended to be that way), what really is pure comedy is how the characters react to the said intercourse. You could also call it bad acting of course ... and unintended to the highest degree. Still the best scene of the whole movie.

Waste of time.

[Mugsta-419-573473 · 1/10 · 11 September 2012]

First off let me start by saying, if you're hoping to watch a scary movie than this is NOT the movie you want to watch. The plot wasn't all that terrible, but there was just to much talking. I'll admit that some parts of the movie i would zone out and than realize i'm watching it because it was so boring.

The beginning was okay, It started as five friends wanting to make documentary about a haunted hotel, they go on a road trip & the car breaks down they go to a cemetery blah blah blah, then finally they get to a bar with a man who is important to the story, he gives them a key and they're off to the hotel.

The ghost wasn't scary, it wasn't any nightmare on elm street effects, it didn't look real & by the end if you were looking for a scary movie you'd be disappointed like i was.

One of the All-Time Worst

[tkactor4 · 1/10 · 7 April 2022]

Y'all, this is straight-up awful. The acting, the special effects, the script: just awful. Dumb characters making dumb choices. There are no redeeming qualities to this film at all. Skip it. Please.

Ghost documentary gone awry

[Peppered_Productions · 2/10 · 26 March 2012]

So, this was one of those movies that I just couldn't get into. Usually I can have a horror movie in the background while doing other things, and still follow along. This one couldn't keep my attention & I had to keep rewinding parts (sometimes more than once) to catch up to the plot.

Basic premise: 5 university students descend upon an alleged haunted hotel to get footage of phenomena for a thesis project. A woman, Elizabeth, and her baby were murdered at the hands of the hotel owner, George, after he finds out she was not faithful, and the baby was not his.

Of course the students have car problems; of course they have to go through a graveyard; of course they encounter punchy locals (with a where-in-the-hell-do-I know-this-guy cameo by "Rowdy" Roddy Piper); of course the writing is plagued with trite stereotypes - the obnoxious alcoholic sex-on-the-brain a-hole & the slutty kleptomaniac girlfriend; of course I found this on fearnet.

So we have our start and back story (sort of). But, here's where things go from standard to confusingly off-track.

We have a shot of the old, deaf townie presumably in the hotel after the group begins to settle in the hotel. This is never explained or followed up on. Seriously, were there scenes cut? Was it meant as misdirection that this was all a setup?

The ghost - can she not decide whether she just wants her murdered baby? revenge against the lineage who wronged her? to kill everyone? to get laid? Because although most of her lines have to do with the first choice, she dabbles in all of the above.

Of course the gang splits up, and amid possession and solid ghost 'hauntings' the kids are picked off one by one. Our heroine, Julie, feels responsible because it was her grandmother who snitched & started all the trouble. Julie gets most of the story through a weird mind- meld flashback. Her heirloom, a locket, actually belongs to the ghost. Will giving it back free her spirit & appease her?

Nope - a trinket doesn't give her baby back, excuse her being tortured and murdered, or get rid of her bloodlust.

The film gives a clear delineation of the 'good' characters versus the 'bad' ones. You pretty much figure out early who will be killed first. The good ones get it, too, because this is one angry spirit.

The ending is kind of craptastic. Julie sees the fate of Elizabeth and succumbs somehow to the same torture. She is left alone in the hotel, staring out of the window, while the tetchy bartender (a lookalike descendant of Elizabeth's lover) looks on, satisfied.

The movie is plagued with a nonsensical plot, bad writing, and some not-so-stellar acting. Honestly, I thought George was a Soprano's reject. The pouty princess 'friend' was kind of annoying, and even our ghost was a bit over-the-top with her expressions.

But the kicker? Over the credits is this random history-lesson back story about the town that really added NOTHING to the plot or characters. The narrator isn't even credited. It was a bizarre choice that really made no sense. Maybe if it was tied in at the beginning as exposition, it may have transitioned properly. Or even if it was in Julie's voice, it may have tied in. But, this was a random, unheard-from omniscient voice-over that made it feel even more like a film school project that had to fit in required elements.

Overall, not a great flick - I have seen worse, but this one definitely could've been made much better.

Side notes - after reading a few of the other reviews:

I had totally missed that this hotel was set in Nevada - or that I-95 reference would have clicked as well. Just goes to show how not interested I was in this film.

Re: Twilight Zone feel. Actually, the summary (and voice) reminded me much more of the Outer Limits. But, I also didn't get that vibe until the ending credits.

It's a semi-watchable movie, with a lot of plot holes and characterization issues to contend with. Fairly forewarned.

Don't be afraid of this ghost

[trashgang · 4/10 · 12 September 2011]

I saw nothing than bad reviews about Ghosts Of Goldfield. Indeed, that title is more like a western instead of a horror so they changed it in Europe to Paranormal Ghost to make use of the success of the "Paranormal" word. Naturally that isn't enough so they made use of the title "Twilight" as coming from the movie Twilight, Kellan Lutz. If you have seen my review on the Twilight trilogy then you know it's in my top 5 of worst flicks ever. So that was no reference for me. Another name that I notice was Roddy Piper. If I put the word Rowdy between then I guess you know that I'm talking about the Hall Of Fame from the WWE. I had no problem with his acting like so many had, I know him from his WWF period in the eighties, screaming and very aggressive. He do appears sometimes in the new WWE world and here in this flick, I thought he did it well, hoped I could say that from the other actors too. Some you really see acting, sadly, Mandy Amano is number one on that list. The scene about the rat in the bar, so bad acting. She is also the only one who goes nude but there's nothing to see for the Kleenex boys out there. It's funny that Paranormal Ghosts started off pretty well. And it even had some blood in the first minutes but after a while the ghost appears in real life and it all becomes a bit dull. There's a lot of talking and suggesting that the ghost is there but when the red stuff comes in it's all to late. The ending is predictable and so it's not all that ghostly as it should be. The version I have is 18+ well if someone can tell why please do so. You can sit through it easily with your family just before the children TV starts. Nevertheless, due the good beginning of the film and the decapitation scene I give it a 4.

Wow! Bad!!!

[africe · 1/10 · 23 August 2021]

This was horrible. I expected so much more from Marnette Patterson. After seeing her on Supernatural and in a few other films, this was a letdown. Maybe she can't handle a leading role. Or maybe her supporting cast was just bad enough to sink her starring role. Or it could just be bad writing. A bit of advice Marnette- be a bit more selective in your acting choices.

Talent behind the Camera is wasted on Lousy Script

[loomis78-815-989034 · 5/10 · 23 February 2014]

Five young filmmakers go to the deserted Goldfield Hotel in Nevada in hopes of filming Elizabeth (Ashly Margaret Rae) the wife of the owner of the hotel whose spirit roams the halls looking for her lost baby. Her affair with a bartender (Roddy Piper) leads to a baby that her husband George Winfield (Chuck Zito) had killed along with Elizabeth. The crew searches the halls acting like school kids rather than a documentary crew with the ghost sliding past and all around them. Two members of the crew Mike (Richard Chance) and Keri (Amano) seem to think the reason they are there is to party, flirt and hang out being completely unaware that they are in a haunted hotel and what their mission is. Group leader Julia (Patterson) quickly realizes her Grandmother may have had something to do with the death of Elizabeth and the group can't escape outside the hotel. Decent Direction by Edwin Winfield and excellent cinematography by Adrian M. Pruett and Roland "Ozzie" Smith cannot disguise the terrible screenplay by Dominic Biondi and story by Brian McMahon. This is a shame because the filmmakers are quite talented and make the most of the location. The story is by the numbers and when you add two of the most annoying characters (Mike & Keri) a horror film has seen in a long time, the film can't overcome it. The dialog is absurd and downright laughable at times. The filmmakers create a good atmosphere only to have it ruined by stupid actions of the characters. There still manages to be a few scares and some gore thrown in but the relentlessly bad script keeps sinking any momentum the film gets going. A lot of talent behind the camera is wasted. It seems pretty clear this team could have made a good low budget horror film with real pay offs if they had any kind of script to work with.

The movie leaves with more questions than answers

[jordondave-28085 · 2/10 · 18 August 2023]

(2007) Ghosts of Goldfield HORROR

Straight-to-rental co-produced and directed by Ed Winfield ghost flick and is inconsistent in terms of it's story line centering on five teens of Julie (Marnette Patterson), Chad (Kellan Lutz), Mike (Richie Chance), Dean (Scott Whyte), and Kerri (Mandy Amano) who're supposed to be ghost hunting, except one of them had her, I'll name her Julie had own agenda, to return to a particular hotel located at a ghost town to revisit the death of a specific ghost, Elizabeth (Ashley Ra) murdered by her husband George Winfield (Chuck Zito). The movie leaves more questions than it gives any answers.