Heavy-handed and lugubrious, WHEN PIGS FLY is a ghost story that lacks any of the traditional virtues of the genre. It was made in 1993, but reached its first major audience with a home video release in 1998.
In a tight-knit village, foul-tempered bar owner Frank (Seymour Cassel) orders his barmaid/exotic dancer Sheila (Maggie O'Neill) to perform menial chores like locking up his shed. There, Sheila spots a discarded antique chair, which she takes as a present to cheer up her depressed landlord, Marty
(Alfred Molina).
Sheila doesn't know that the chair comes with its own resident poltergeists. Transported to Marty's musty basement, Lilly (Marianne Faithfull), the ghost of Frank's wife, and Ruthie (Rachel Bella), her child-spirit guardian, raise an ectoplasmic ruckus until a bewildered Marty moves the chair to
his cosy living room.
Ruthie and Lilly reveal themselves to Marty and Sheila and tell them that Lilly was seated in the chair when abusive Frank beat her to death. After Lilly and Ruthie unnerve Frank with mischievous pranks at his bar, Marty and Sheila agree to exact revenge against Frank. Lilly shows them where Frank
has hidden his hoarded fortune. When Frank catches Marty and Sheila stealing it, he causes a disturbance that attracts the police. On the verge of a breakdown, Frank confesses to Lilly's slaying in front of the cops. Keeping some of Frank's loot for themselves, Marty and Sheila deliver the bulk of
it to Lilly's married daughter, then take Ruthie and Lilly to their new resting place--the deck of Lilly's son-in-law's houseboat.
WHEN PIGS FLY was directed by former Jim Jarmusch associate Sara Driver, whose debut feature SLEEPWALK (1987) was similarly slow moving. Famed cinematographer Robby Muller was the wrong choice to photograph this: although his colors are breathtaking, the compositions are static and the photography
has a somber look, lending this wispy ghost pageant an unsuitable gravity. Insufferable screenwriting and club-footed direction make this woebegone movie a clumsily coy salute to ghostly enterprise and human accountability. Although we're supposed to cheer as the spirits revitalize depressed
Marty's life-force, our goodwill is siphoned off by extraneous special effects and the cluttered plot. One promising sequence, in which the spirits and Marty review ghostly scenes of his childhood, winds down without capitalizing on Marty's reaction to the sight of his beloved father dancing in a
bar. Haunted by vague concepts concerning the supernatural and its connection to memory, WHEN PIGS FLY loses much of its emotional power when it unnecessarily drags out its story. (Violence, extreme profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment
