Welcome back to Rotten Ink and to a very kid friendly “From Horror Movie To Horror Comic” update. One of the great things about horror films is that humans of all ages like to be scared and enjoy watching these types of films late at night. We covered a horror film that was for all ages earlier this year I talked about the 1975 film “Escape To Witch Mountain,” and I figured why not do another so I chose the 1995 film Casper that was the first live action film starring everyone’s favorite Friendly Ghost who was a big hit already for decades thanks to his many comic series from Harvey Comics as well as the many cartoons he had made about him. Now yes, I know that Casper is not a “horror film” but it is what I would call a gateway film for younger fans to discover the wonderful scares of horror cinema, plus I am sure The Ghostly Trio did give some younger viewers some frights…I mean what is more classic scary than a ghost saying “Booooooo”. So let’s not waste any more time as I think a storm is brewing and Whipstaff Manor is just a short distance away and we can find shelter and talk about Casper!
Let’s start off by taking a look at The Ghostly Trio (Stretch, Fatso & Stinkie) and their ways of haunting and scaring the living. Not much is known about the lives of The Ghostly Trio before they passed away. What is mostly known is their time as ghosts who live at Whipstaff Manor, an old property that was owned by a rich family that has been neglected for many decades causing it to become rundown and the source of the town’s stories of haunted lore. Stretch is the leader of the trio, and he is a tall lanky ghost with a big nose and a bad attitude. he likes to give orders, shout and scare those who cross his path. Stinkie is a more quiet ghost but is just as much into scaring people as his brothers. his calling card is that he smells real bad with his breath being the worst as it is enough to make a person pass out from smelling it. Fatso is the short chubby one of the bunch who is always hungry and is always looking to deliver a fright. Since the Trio are ghosts, it mean they can float through objects, enter a living person’s body and can make their appearances more extreme causing maximum fright to the living. They are said to be the uncles of Casper but probably not in life, just in the after life as he lives in the home with them and in some ways they watch after him. While they are frightful ghosts, they do seem to also have a nice side, as friendship seems to be important to them. The only way that they can be defeated is by them finding their reason for being still on Earth and not in the netherworld, and by that I mean finish their unfinished business here among the living. While The Ghostly Trio are not the scariest ghosts nor the deadliest that we have covered here on Rotten Ink, they still have their place in the would of spirits.
So now that we have taken a look at The Ghostly Trio and their haunting ways, I think that we should now take a look at the film they are from and that is of course Casper from 1995. And like before, I will be taking this family fright film’s plot from our friends at IMDB and then I will write about the film’s production as well as my thoughts on the film. So if you are ready, let’s head a little deeper into Whipstaff Manor and see what Casper The Friendly Ghost is up too.
Casper (1995)
“An afterlife therapist and his daughter meet a friendly young ghost when they move into a crumbling mansion in order to rid the premises of wicked spirits.”
Back in the early 90’s Steven Spielberg was looking to make a film about the classic cartoon and comic book character Casper The Friendly Ghost and found Brad Sillberling to direct this big screen live action film. The thing with Brad is that he was mostly known for being a director of TV shows as he had such shows as Doogie Howser M.D., L.A. Law and NYPD Blue under his belt. When it came to the script, Sherri Stoner & Deanna Oliver would be hired to make a super kid friendly film that would do the Harvey Comics character justice. The film was given a budget of around $55 million, and the production was really stressful as this was one of the first films to feature a CGI created character as the main character and without Casper looking just right, the film could have fallen apart. When it came to casting they would hire Christina Ricci to play the young living friend of Casper and other actors hired include Bill Pullman, Eric Idle, Cathy Moriarty, Ben Stein and Amy Brenneman plus it also featured cameos from Mr. Rogers, Mel Gibson, Dan Aykroyd, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Novello and John Kassier to name a few with Aykroyd playing his Ghostbusters character Ray Stanz and Kassir is voicing The Crypt Keeper again! Once edited James Horner would do the musical score, and Little Richard would perform the classic Casper theme song. The film would be released in theaters on May 26, 1995 and would do very well for Universal Pictures as it would bring in a worldwide box office of $288 million and was met with pretty positive reviews from critics as well as viewers. The film was slated to get a sequel after the success of the first film but it is said that is was cancelled when Christina Ricci was not fully committed to reprise her role. The film would spark a Marvel adaptation comic, toys, books, music, video games and cards to be released based around it, not to mention Harvey Comics would team with 20th Century Fox to release direct to video live action films to cash in after the official sequel was never made. Casper in 1995 was released alongside such other Horror Movies as Castle Freak, Candyman 2, Halloween 6, The Howling 7, Leprechaun 3, Night Of The Scarecrow, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4, Vampire In Brooklyn and Witchboard 3 to name a few.
In 1995 I can remember when Casper was being released in the theaters as it had a pretty big push around it, but I was a teenager and had not much interest in seeing it in the theater as I would much rather had been watching more bloody Horror Films and not a family friendly fright flick. One of the biggest things I remember as well is the glow in the dark puppets that were at Pizza Hut as at a time my family ate at The Hut fairly often, and for a fast food plastic puppet, they were pretty cool and detailed. The one thing that made the film stand out for many was the fact it starred Christina Ricci, who was a popular actress for my age group as she was the same age as me and my classmates and she had been a star due to her role as Wednesday Addams in the 1991 film “The Addams Family” and its 1993 sequel “Addams Family Values”, and this also showed that she was a teen actress who starred in many kid friendly fright films and she would fully make the jump into horror in 1999 starring in the Tim Burton film “Sleepy Hollow”. I cannot tell you the first time I saw Casper but it was on broadcast TV when I did and I can remember liking the film as I thought the special effects for the ghosts were really cool, and one other weird memory I have is when I worked for a local Blockbuster Video a upset mother wanted her money back as she claimed the film scared her child and gave them nightmares! Yep that really happened, so maybe Casper really is a horror film for young kids! If you are also wondering my favorite Ghostly Trio member is Stinkie as I find this foul smelling ghost to be cool looking plus you can’t go wrong with a ghost that has foul breath. I did grow up reading Casper comics as well as paperback books and really enjoyed them, we would get most of our Casper comics from garage sales as well as gifts from my grandparents. One other thing I guess I can talk about is I did have and play the Casper video game that was based on the film for the Sony Playstation…but really I don’t have much more to say about the Casper film besides it’s a good kids film that has a solid following still to this day.
So as you can see, while Casper is a film that I remember from my youth it is one that I was just a little too old for when released so I do not have that big of a connection to, but again I do understand why the kids of that time do. I would like to thank Bell Book And Comic for having this comic in stock and making this update possible. I would also like to remind you all that I grade these comics on a star scale of 1 to 4 and am looking for how well the comics stay to the source material, its entertainment value and its art and story. I would also like to point out that Marvel Comics released an adaptation comic of Casper who is a character that was created by Harvey Comics who still was making comics and merchandise for him at the time…what a crazy time it was for comics in the 1990’s. So with that, let’s get to the review portion of this update.
Casper # 1 **1/2
Released in 1995 Cover Price $2.50 Marvel # 1 of 1
After the death of her father Carrigan Crittenden is left the family haunted home in Maine called Whipstaff Manor, and she is very mad about this, as she wanted all the money that instead he left to animal charities. But Carrigan and her lawyer Dibs get more interested in the old home when they find a hidden message in the homes deed that says there is hidden treasure on the property, but when she and Dibs get to the home one rainy night they are scare off by Casper The Friendly Ghost who tries to welcome them to his living place. And when Carrigan tries to hire a priest and a Ghostbuster to rid the home of the ghosts, they are all scared off by Stretch, Fatso & Stinkie also known as The Ghostly Trio. One night Casper is watching TV and sees a story on the news about Dr. James Harvey, a man who talks to lonely ghosts, and he also falls in love with his daughter Kat Harvey and travels via the cable wire to the hotel room of Carrigan and plays the news story and this causes her to call Dr. Harvey to try and ride her haunted home of the ghosts and he takes the job, and makes his daughter Kat a promise that this will be the last case the do if he is unable to make contact with the ghost of her mother Amelia. Once Dr. Harvey and Kat make it to the Whipstaff Manor they start setting things up, and Casper fails at his first attempt at talking to Kat as by accident he scares her, and worse The Ghostly Trio arrive and start messing with Dr. Harvey even entering his body and causing him to shake around, chasing him around and just being gross…but by the next morning they kind of start to become friends while they still mess with him you can tell that they like him…and Casper even fixed everyone breakfast. Kat starts her new school and puts it out there that they can have the Halloween dance at Whipstaff Manor here current living place and also the towns local haunted house. Casper gets jealous when a young man named Vic asks Kat to be his date as he wanted to be, but it is all a set up by a fellow classmate Amber who just wants to tease Kat in front of her new school. Casper and Kat hang out that night were the young ghost tells her he has forgotten about his past, and this makes her sad for him as well as for her mother as she might forget her and her dad. The next night while Dr. Harvey is depressed The Ghostly Trio take him out for a night on the town that leads to him falling into a hole and dying, Carrigan and Dibs find the homes blueprints and the possible location of the lost treasure and this leads to Carrigan dying in a accident and becoming a ghost so she can enter the vault, and lastly Kat finds Casper’s old toy room and the memories come back of his death as well as his dads secret lab were he made a machine that could turn a ghost into a living human again! In the end Kat tricks the ghost of Carrigan into disappearing for good, Dibs is knocked out of a window, The Ghostly Trio scare Amber & Vic before they can pull their prank, the machine is used to bring back Dr. Harvey to the land of the living, Casper is granting a wish of becoming a real boy by the ghost of Amelia Harvery who also speaks to her husband before returning to heaven, and Kat has her Halloween Dance Party and is able to dance with Casper.
This is a fun and silly adaptation that really does do justice to the film its based on as it keeps everything very kid friendly and retains some of the ghostly frights that could for sure possibly scare younger readers as The Ghostly Trio are the source of the scares, but to be fair by a certain point they become nice to the family and are very much major aspects of the comedy. The plot as a spoiled woman wanting to find hidden treasure in the old family manor that is haunted by four ghosts so she hires a man who claims to be a therapist to ghosts to get rid of them, but instead he and his daughter becomes friends with the ghosts and protect them from being kicked out of their home and put a stop to the woman’s greed when she herself turns into a ghost. The main character of this adaptation comic is Casper, the ghost of a 12-year old boy who passed away after getting sick and who’s dad made a one time use machine that could bring the ghost back to the world of the living, but when his father was locked up in an asylum the young ghost slowly started to forget his past…but thanks to his new living friend Kat Harvey he is able to remember and hold onto his memories. Casper is a very nice and friendly ghost who does not want to scare people but wants them to be his friends, while on the other hand his three “uncles” The Ghostly Trio like to scare and torment people who enter their rundown home, but even they come around and befriend the Harvey Family showing that the three are not such bad spirits after all. The Harvey Family are kind of a mess as the father James has dedicated his life to speaking to ghosts with the hopes of being able to talk to the spirit of his deceased wife, but his work also has caused him to move around and that means is teenage daughter keeps having to switch schools and is not making any lasting friends. And the main villains of this story are Carrigan Crittenden and her goofy lawyer Dibs, but while they are greedy they are not much of a threat to the ghosts or the Harvey Family and when push comes to shove they are both beaten pretty easily. The story over all is touching and about how you should never forget your passed loved ones, but you can not also allow those memories of them to hold you back from living your life. It also shows the importance of friendship and family as well as the fact it’s a great thing to show kindness to others. The scares in this comic as I have said before come from The Ghostly Trio as they are gross and go out of their way to scare the living, another aspect comes from Whipstaff Manor as it is a rundown place and looks like your typical haunted house. And with this being a kids comic that means much like the family film its based on there is no blood being spilt. The cover for this comic is pretty cool and is just one of the classic promo pictures used for the film and the interior art is done by Ernie Colon and is great stuff as the living characters do not look like the actors who played them in the film the four ghosts are dead on and I really like how he drew The Ghostly Trio. Over all this is a fun read if you are looking for something that has horror elements but is not t0o scary, plus fans of the film and Casper in general should check this one out. Checkout the artwork below to see the style used by Colon in this adaptation comic.
Casper really is an iconic character when it comes to the world of comics books and cartoons and he even made a splash in the world of movies with not only this one but also all the direct to video films that flooded shelves for awhile. And it was fun to revisit the film as well as read this comic adaptation for the first time to create this update, plus it was nice to showcase a film and character that is a gateway for younger fans to discover the awesome world of Horror Movies. But while our time with Casper & The Ghostly Trio has come to an end, our next update will be our July 4th update and we will be celebrating an America Hero in the world of comic books and this year it will be a team and that team is The Flavor Force ! So until next time, read a comic or three, watch a film or two and as always support your local Horror Host. See you next update as we talk about those tasty frozen treats called Popsicles and their superhero versions! Oh and I should say that Casper The Friendly Ghost here is the first update in our countdown to Halloween 2025, and while we will be taking a break for Popsicles the Horror Themed updates will pick up right after it and will continue until the first update of November so as you can see we have many frightful updates ahead of us.
