The Spirit Is Willing (1967)

I recall this film when I was a child and wondered why it has never been shown on TV. Is there a site I can access it to view again does anyone know? has there recently been a remake did someone say? I recall laughing a lot at it and have often wondered why it has not been released for general view again. it was a funny film and spooky funnies are good. I have hazy memories of it but I think it was rather slapstick and in a lovely New England setting. of course, it might have contained things which today we consider sexist, I can't recall, but some of the comments imply the content may be a little suspect. However, as a child I enjoyed it.

I noticed a lot of people wishing there was a way to purchase a copy of this movie. I found a site online that sells rare and classic movies and stuff like that...and they carry this one. Plus, the DVD is only like $12.Go to - http://store.thesmallscreen.org/spiswi19dvd.html.Plug that URL into your browser and see for yourself.I saw the movie when I was really really little and had just written it off as my imagination until I found it here. It combines two things little kids are understandably intrigued by: ghosts and sex. It's comforting to know that I was not simply too imaginative as a child, that the things I swear I remember weren't just fantasies! IMDb validated me just a little.I wish I was alive in the sixties. Because according to these people, the greatest problem of THEIR time was "the sex lives of ghosts," not crime and poverty. Nice.

Nathaniel Benchley (son of humorist Robert Benchley) wrote The Visitors, a frightening novel about a ghostly haunting, which was purchased for filming by legendary Hollywood showman William Castle.Castle, who had yet to attain respect as producer (but not director) of Roman Polanski's masterly Rosemary's Baby (1968), had recently completed a successful string of blatant imitations of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), including Homicidal (1961) and Strait-Jacket (1964), and had stumbled with a pair of inept teen-thrillers, I Saw What You Did (1965) and Let's Kill Uncle (1966). Evidently seeking to expand his audience while maintaining his position as king of schlock horror, Castle re-visioned Benchley's decidedly adult novel as a family comedy along the lines of his bland 13 Ghosts (1960). Unfortunately, Castle was hopeless as a comedy director, as his overly-broad Hammer remake of The Old Dark House (1963) had demonstrated. Humor had been an essential underlying element of Castle's most successful earlier films, The House on Haunted Hill (1958) and The Tingler (1959), but this had been supplied by star Vincent Price and the ironic wit of screenwriter Robb White rather than any knack on the part of the director. Castle persisted and The Spirit Is Willing descended into lazy slapstick, as did its black-comedy follow-up The Busy Body (1967), also starring Sid Caesar. In and of itself, The Spirit Is Willing is a fun little movie which today carries an aura of tacky nostalgia, but the golden opportunity for a chilling ghostly thriller along the lines of Robert Wise's classic The Haunting (1963) was recklessly thrown away.It behooves Dark Castle Entertainment, which has been remaking the Castle "classics", to consider a new, dramatic version of the Benchley novel. With the blockbuster success of films like The Sixth Sense, The Others and The Ring, the time is right for The Visitors to arrive.

"The Spirit is Willing" for me is one of those nostalgic movies from the 60's..It used to turn up on tv every once in a while but now it's been way too many years since I have seen it.. I cannot fathom why it has not been released on video yet...What about a William Castle Marathon, AMC or TCM?????