GHOST RIDER (2007)

I guess there’s something inherently schizophrenic in a story about a guy who is one person during the day and another person at night, and Ghost Rider displays its schizo qualities from beginning to end. Its overwrought visuals are interesting in a comic book splash panel sort of way and star Nicolas Cage hits the dialogue notes right, especially with the lines one suspects he wrote himself. But writer/director Mark Steven Johnson can’t seem to decide whether the Ghost Rider can stand alone or whether he needs camp to stay the night.

Cage is Johnny Blaze, stunt motorcyclist. As a young man he rode with his dad in circus sideshows, but when he found out that Papa Blaze was dying of cancer, he sold his soul to Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda—yup, old Wyatt himself--trying really hard not to let his dialogue break him up) in exchange for a remission of the disease. The cancer vanishes overnight but dat mean ol’ devil man than allows Blaze the Elder to die in a bike accident. I would love for him to have been killed by a shotgun blast from a redneck in a pickup, but that would have been just too cheesy, rider.

Johnny grows up, still riding stunt bikes on the southern circuit, a sort of boll weevil Knievel. Then, Mephistopheles’ son Blackheart (Wes Bentley) decides to oust his old man, claim 1,000 of the worst souls and take over the world. Mephistopheles calls in Blaze’s debt and makes him the new Ghost Rider, the devil’s bounty hunter, assigned to stopping Blackheart in exchange for release from his contract. If any of this makes sense to you, you need to seek professional help.

Enlisting the aid of a cemetery caretaker (Sam Elliott, who chews his scenes with the same gusto Caretaker chews his plug) and trying to explain his predicament to unbelieving love Roxanne (Eva Mendes, who easily comes off the worst in the cast because she’s the one who can never quite cover up the fact that she thinks this is all absurd), Blaze becomes one mean motor scooter.

Watching the film, I could never get beyond the belief that Mark Steven Johnson had a lot less to do with what ended up on screen than Cage did. An admitted fan of the “Ghost Rider” comic book, Cage had to have a tattoo of the character covered by makeup so he could play it. Much of his natural goofiness comes across. It’s hard not to believe that Blaze’s Elvis accent, love for jelly beans sucked out of a martini glass, video tapes of chimps acting like martial artists, and constant background music supplied by The Carpenters didn’t originate with the actor. Maybe the film sat on the shelf for two years because no one could figure out how to reconcile Johnson’s footage with Cage’s add-ons.

Russell Boyd’s photography provides some nice visuals, the effects are frequently sub-par in a nice “B” movie way, and the actors appear to be having a good time. I especially liked Elliott’s Caretaker, who spends most of his work day doing what all stereotype manual laborers’ do—leaning on a shovel.

I don’t know whether or not Ghost Rider is an accurate adaptation of the comic book, but I don’t care either. I just wish it had taken one path or the other—camp or seriousness. As it is, it isn’t a flat tire, but the air is leaking out pretty rapidly.