Director Peter Medak journey's into dwell hell with this documentary about a film making disaster (Ghost in the Noonday Sun, 74) well over two generations old. Based on a flimsy idea and fraught with problems from the outset with its biggest, the superstar lead, Peter Sellers. An excellent example of how not to make a movie, one is left to wonder where the interest lies in a film that barely saw the light of days in theatres and a diva star dead 40 years.
In the early 70s director Peter Medak was riding high after guiding Peter O'Toole to an Oscar nomination in The Ruling Class. Approached by Sellers with an idea for a pirate picture dreamed up with famed Goon Show performer Spike Milligan, Medak and his pirate ship headed for Cyprus, where in classic foreshadowing the drunken captain promptly ran it aground. From there it was all downhill with an out of control Sellers putting the production behind schedule almost immediately. Late, seasick, Sellers eventually feigned a heart attack to go out with a royal back in England with matters only deteriating further upon his return.
Medak provides archival material as well as reunite with some of the surviving members of the production unanimous in praising Seller's talent as well as his difficult and churlish ways. Producing memories more akin to nausea than nostalgia Medak frustratingly whines over the debacle and his love/hate relationship with Sellers whose ghost haunts him to this day and it soon grows tiresome. Pete should have read his Omar Kayyam before embarking on this "dead yesterday." Ghost is an indecorous pity party.
