This misbegotten tilt at a sort of Celtic Ghostbusters is never quite as awful as its unenviable reputation suggests. The comic set-up’s actually quite promising as a full-on Peter O’Toole hopes to save his ancestral seat by pretending it’s haunted, only for real spectres to emerge from the woodwork and mingle with his American visitors.

True, it falls down badly attempting large-scale slapstick high-jinks, but the dialogue fires out a few zingers, and Liam Neeson is, frankly, hilarious as the old place’s lustiest long-dead resident. The studio patched together the final cut, which remains shambolic but not unendearing.

Showing as part of our Neil Jordan Retrospective which runs throughout May. His new film, Byzantium, opens on May 31st. 

See our online exhibition of some of Neil Jordan’s substantial document collections held by the IFI Irish Film Archive.