I decided to give Disney another chance after watching The Haunted Mansion. This one wasn’t even released in theaters, but as a two-part TV special during the Christmas season of 1980. Which…I guess makes sense. As much sense as this movie. I had a hard time following the exact plot and it was made for children so I can’t imagine some Gen-Xer out there having nostalgia for this movie. Unless they are a post-Civil War military fan. I mean who WASN’T in 1980.

First of all, this movie was the opposite of scary. In fact the scariest thing was the rampant sexism and thinly veiled racism. But that’s Disney for you. So if you want to watch this with your young charges, go ahead. But they might run out of the room out of boredom, not fear.

The plot seems simple enough: three ghosts try to save a military school from closing. What the short synopsis doesn’t tell you is that the ghosts only start to help when GIRLS show up on the grounds. The school was already in foreclosure for months, maybe even years and enrollment has been trending downwards for awhile. When a military school is for non-troubled youths, you must have seen a lot of this happening after Vietnam.

At the same time the school becomes co-educational, a student shows up that also could possibly save the school, due to the massive fortune he will inherit after the sudden death of his parents. This kid is messed up, to say the least. He has severe survivor’s guilt (possibly PTSD) and his aunt and uncle are fighting over the custody of him like he’s an abandoned dog (with a million dollar trust fund). You soon find out the aunt is the greedier of the two and wants to somehow buy the military school just to tear it down…but needs her nephew to get into the military school so it fails. The logic is not there, but obviously the screenwriter did not care.

The ghosts are the school’s founders (General Buxley and her wife Bettina) and their Sergeant Major pal Sweet. They don’t confirm it, but there’s definitely a throuple situation here. No one hangs out in eternity with someone they aren’t related to unless there’s a good reason. Anyway, the ghosts decide to protect the boy no matter what, but then also discover a need to stop the aunt from following through on her nonsensical plan.

There are no rules in this ghost world. They can somehow travel anywhere they want as long as they have a car. They can reveal themselves to anyone they want. They can manipulate SOME objects but not others. Doors sometimes need to be open and other times they can just walk right in. They can smoke cigars! The insanity of Disney knows NO bounds.

In the end, everyone is happy and the ghost throuple is able to go back to their paintings and continue to spy on adolescents as much as they want, because no one at Disney saw anything wrong with this. If you need background noise, I recommend this movie. However, there’s way better “Disney family friendly movies” you can watch that at least have a more cohesive plot line.