Casper is a 1995 American live-action family comedy fantasy feature film, directed by Brad Silberling, loosely based on the Harvey Comics cartoon character Casper the Friendly Ghost. The ghosts featured in the film computer-generated imagery. It was much darker in tone comparison to the cartoons and comics.
The film's featured spoiled heiress Carrigan Crittenden (Cathy Moriarty), her brother Jonathan (Jeff Daniels), nephew J.J. (Jonathan Brandis) and her bumbling henchman (Eric Idle) ask "ghost therapist" Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman) to exorcise the spectral inhabitants of a haunted manor fabled to contain treasure. Casper, the spirit of a deceased twelve-year-old boy and his eleven-year-old cousin Danny, also a ghost, befriend the therapist's young daughter Kat (Christina Ricci). In addition, they unravel the mystery surrounding the manor's frequent vistor, an old man named Vincent (Richard Hamilton), who has surprising ties to the pasts of both the manor and Casper and Danny.
The film led to an animated television spin-off entitled The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, and a live-action spin-off Casper & Friends: Magical Mysteries, which featured Ricci, Pullman, and Hamilton reprising their roles.
Plot[]
In the town of Friendship, Maine, two young boys, Nicky and Andreas (Chauncey Leopardi and Spencer Vrooman) sneak into creepy, old Whipstaff Manor, apparently on a from other kids from school, but they are scared away by young ghosts Casper (voice of Malachi Pearson) and Danny (Courtland Mead).
Meanwhile, the ruthless heiress Carrigan Crittenden (Cathy Moriarty), her brother Jonathan (Jeff Daniels), his wife and their five children, all attend the will reading of the former two's recently deceased wealthy father. Carrigan expects to inherit at least half of their family estate. But to her dismay, she discovers that her father gave almost his entire fortune to environmental causes, and that he left Jonathan's kids separate trust funds worth $2 million each, Jonathan himself $50,000 and a collection of classic cars that he'd always admired, and to Carrigan, another $50,000, and Whipstaff Manor.
Infuriated, she threatens to sue the law office and all the foundations who inherited, and then out of frustration, throws the will and deeds into the fireplace, but her associate Paul "Dibs" Plutzker manages to save them, burning his hand in the process. However, one of the will's pages is discover to have a secret message that states Whipstaff Manor has treasure hidden inside.
Determined to get what she "deserves", Carrigan along with Dibs, Jonathan, and her eldest nephew J.J. (Jonathan Brandis) travel to Whipstaff; upon entering the house, they encounter an old man named Vincent (Richard Hamilton), who warns them to be careful, and two young ghosts Casper and Danny, who unintentionally scare them into screaming, which wakes up their beastly uncles The Ghostly Trio (voices of Joe Nipote, Joe Alaskey and Brad Garrett), who then chase them all out the manor.
Carrigan, Dibs, Jonathan, and J.J. try to rid the house of the ghosts, first by hiring a priest (Don Novello) and ghostbuster (Dan Aykroyd), to evict them and later, a demolition team to demolish the house, but all attempts are unsuccessful as the Ghostly Trio scare them all away, much to Vincent's satisfaction.
Later, a lonely Casper watches a news report of psychiatrist-turned-paranormal therapist James Harvey, and is instantly smitten with his teenage daughter Kat, which lead him and Danny, who also wants new company at the a manor, to find and inspire Carrigan, so she can summon Dr. Harvey to Whipstaff. Harvey and Kat have an estranged relationship due to the former’s reputation, their constant moving around, and his search for the ghost of his late wife Amelia.
Just before the Harveys arrive at Whipstaff Manor, Dr. Harvey promises Kat that his next assignment will be his last and they seal the agreement as a pinky promise. Once they reach the house, they meet the Crittendens and Dibs. Carrigan is aghast to discover that it may take a long time for Dr. Harvey to get rid of the ghosts and makes it clear that she won't pay him until they are gone. She then assigns J.J., over Jonathan's objections, to stay with the Harveys in the manor to keep an eye on them and report back to her.
The Harveys and J.J. enter the manor and Kat goes upstairs herself to find bedroom for herself. Casper tries to work up the courage to speak to her, but Danny gets her attention by accident and the two scare her. Her father and J.J. run upstairs to see what's wrong, but they are as terrified by the sight of real ghosts as she is. Dr. Harvey frantically takes his daughter into a closet and tells her to stay there while he and J.J. confront the ghosts themselves.
Meanwhile, the Ghostly Trio arrive home from a night's hauntings, as does Vincent for a night time visit. Casper and Danny try to convince them to eat outside, but they realize that the two trying to keep them out of the house and shoot them into the sky like a rubber band. With Casper and Danny out of the way, the trio find Dr. Harvey and J.J. and begin attacking them, at which they fight back. As Vincent tries to break up the fight, Dr. Harvey eventually defeats the trio by sucking them up with a vacuum cleaner. Shaken up but undeterred, he, Kat, and J.J. decide to bunk together for the night, while Casper, Danny, and Vincent decide to leave the Ghostly trio in the vacuum for the time being.
The next day, Kat, Dr. Harvey, and J.J. befriend Casper and Danny over breakfast, and also properly, meet Vincent who heavily implies he knows them personally. After a confrontation with the Ghostly Trio nearly ruins breakfast, Kat goes to school with Casper following her. She becomes popular when her class agree to host their Halloween party at Whipstaff upon learning she lives there. Amber Whitmire (Jessica Wesson), Kat’s classmate who immediately dislikes her, becomes envious of Kat stealing her spotlight since originally the party was going to be at her place and plots with her boyfriend Vic DePhillippi (Garette Ratliff Henson) to humiliate Kat during the party.
Harvey attempts to have therapy sessions with the Ghostly Trio, who reveal they know Amelia; in exchange for getting Carrigan to leave them alone, they promise to go through the "red tape" involved to get Harvey a meeting with his wife. Meanwhile, Vic asks Kat to the Halloween dance (as part of Amber's plan) and she agrees. Casper becomes jealous of Vic, and Danny is immediately suspicious of Vic's motivations, but Kat is insistent that she can't go to the Halloween dance with a ghost. In order to impress her, the two ghosts take her to a lighthouse. When she asks them about their lives, the two realize that neither of them remember any of it; they admit there is a familiar feeling about Vincent, but can't remember him either, and sadly figure to Kat that, when you're a ghost, none of life matters anymore.
The next day, Kat tells her father that she wants to look "date nice" at the dance and asks to buy a new dress for it. He tells that he would love to buy her whatever outfit she wants, but says that he won't get any money until Carrigan pays him. Kat decides to figure out something herself, and asks him and J.J. to keep the Ghostly Trio away from the party. Later, Dr. Harvey becomes dispassionate after the trio pull a prank on him, so they take him and J.J. out for a night on the town. Taking advantage of the Ghostly Trio being out of the house, Carrigan, Jonathan, and Dibs, who'd returned to spy on Dr. Harvey's progress, enter the house to search for the treasure.
Meanwhile, Vincent returns to the mansion, and Kat asks for answers about his ties to Casper, Danny, and Whipstaff. Deciding to show her, Vincent takes Kat to the attic, and to an old room that turns out to be the boys' old playroom, and the two fix it up for them. When the two ghosts find the room, their memories return as they embrace their old possessions; Casper even gives Kat his mother's old dress for the dance.
Upon finding an old sled, Casper and Danny then remember how they died, and Vincent finally reveals his connection to them: the three boys were the sons of famous inventor brothers J.T. and Frederick McFadden; Casper was J.T.'s son, and Vincent and Danny were Fredrick's sons. The boys each lost their mothers a year apart. One winter, their fathers' bought them the sled, that they'd previously begged for. The three boys were so happy that they spent the whole day playing with it, well into the night, causing all three to fall ill with pneumonia. While Vincent, being the oldest, soon recovered, Casper and Danny eventually took a turn for the worse, and both succumbed to the illness two days apart from each other. After their deaths, the two became ghosts to keep their fathers and Vincent, who was seventeen at the time, company. Eventually, J.T. and Frederick built a machine named the Lazarus, which he claimed could bring the dead back to life to resurrect their dead sons. Unfortunately, they never got to truly test it, as the public soon got wind of it, and eventually J.T. was declared legally insane and locked away in an asylum, where he spent the rest of his life, and Frederick died of a stroke just months afterward. After burying his father, Vincent, unable to cope all the loss and sad memories, took the McFadden family fortune, and left Friendship with his girlfriend Maizy, a longtime friend of the family. The two eloped, and moved to California, where they started their own business and had a large family of children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. Vincent had vowed to never return to Friendship, but eventually relented following Maizy's death the previous year, and had been visiting the mansion ever since.
After hearing the story, the now-reunited McFaddens take Kat down to their fathers' basement lab to find the Lazarus, which they eventually manage to rise. After figuring out how to work the machine, they plug in a capsule of formula that their father's created to bring ghosts back to life, and as it turns out, there's just enough for two. Taking cue of this, Kat and Vincent power up the Lazarus and prepare to bring Casper and Danny back to life. Unfortunately, as the process gets underway, Carrigan, Jonathan, and Dibs, having followed the four to the lab, sneak in and steal the formula capsule, disrupting the machine and causing Casper and Danny to turn into sunny-side up eggs.
Despite Jonathan's warnings for them not to mess around with death, Carrigan and Dibs strategize that as ghosts, they would be able to fly through thick solid walls like the vault to retrieve the treasure, and use the Lazarus to come back to life. However, Carrigan has no intention to die herself. She quickly grabs an axe and attempts to kill Dibs with it.
After a few moments of satirival back and forth attempts to kill each other, and with Jonathan's unsuccessful attempts to stop them, Carrigan drives her car at Dibs and Jonathan, attempting to run the former over. Dibs, however, tosses a statue head at her car, damaging the windshield, before dodging her vehicular assault. Jonathan, however, is hit and knocked onto her windshield, becoming a literal hood ornament; he yells at her to stop the car and her attempts to kill Dibs, which she ignores. She tries to turn around for another attempt at Dibs, but the loose gravel driveway along with her vehicle's speed, provide little traction to turn, causing her to go zooming into the nearby woods with Jonathan still on her hood.
After a couple frantic seconds driving through the woods and being unable to see, Jonathan eventually falls off Carrigan's hood just before she crashes into a tree. Her airbag immediately inflates, disorienting and frustrating her. As Carrigan fights to deflate the airbag and remove her seatbelt, she does not notice that her car, particularly the driver's side, is hanging over the edge of a large cliff. Jonathan, recovering from his fall, quickly does notice this. He yells at his sister to stay in the car, but she either ignores or fails to hear him; she then opens the door and steps out of the vehicle without looking at where she's going, and falls screaming down the cliff to her death, much to Jonathan's shock and horror.
Moments later, Dibs makes his way out to Jonathan and the car to see what happened to Carrigan. The two scream her name out over the cliff trying to see if she has revived as a ghost. After a few seconds of no answer, they assume she did not become a ghost and is dead forever. While Jonathan appears genuinely saddened over her death, Dibs only seems to be sad that she had a favorite pair of sunglasses of his with her when she fell. The two men then turn and start to walk away.
At that moment, Carrigan suddenly reappears as a monstrous ghost to a shocked Dibs and Jonathan and says, "Not so fast, little men! The b**ch is back"!
Meanwhile, at a bar, Dr. Harvey and J.J. sing karaoke together; unknown to them, the Ghostly Trio plan on killing them to make themselves a quintet, but end up having a change of heart after the two, both drunk, state that they are going to tell Carrigan off so the ghosts can stay in their home. However, as they drunkenly leave, Harvey and J.J. accidentally fall to their deaths down a manhole.
Back at the laboratory, Kat and Vincent use dust bellows to reinflate Casper and Danny. Just as they finish, Carrigan suddenly appears, flies into the laboratory and grabs a treasure chest inside the vault. Dibs and Jonathan soon reappear and show Carrigan the capsule to help her remember. Kat and Vincent realize that they stole the capsule and claims it's Casper's. Carrigan laughs and disagrees again as she orders Jonathan and Dibs to revive her. Just as he approaches, Casper steals the capsule back from Dibs, knocks him into the moat of the laboratory, and he and Danny take Vincent and Kat back upstairs where she greets the high school kids who have arrived for her Halloween party.
The four return back to the laboratory where Kat and Vincent stop Casper and Danny from confronting Dibs and Jonathan for trying opening his treasure. They install the formula into the Lazarus and prep it for another revival attempt, only to find Carrigan inside the machine. She orders Dibs to turn her human again and insults him in the process, but he, having finally become fed up of her abuse and disrespect of him, turns on her saying that they are through and that he will be using the treasure to by a great big expense house with lovely purple wallpaper and great big green carpets and adopt a little dog called Carrigan "a b**ch just like [her]". When Jonathan tries to talk sense into him, he pulls a gun on him in his madness, declaring his intention to kill Jonathan, believing that he would come after him for his sister's death, and proclaiming that he's got the power and he's got the treasure, which prompts Carrigan to angrily fling him out of a window for his betrayal and threatening her brother.
Jonathan then opens the treasure chest and finds a baseball autograpahed by Duke Snider and a couple of mitts, and stacks of baseball cards. Carrigan becomes enraged and denounces the stuff as junk, but Jonathan, after finding more autographed memorabilia in the vault and being a baseball enthusiast, notes that they have a major collection that's worth at least several million dollars, if the right buyer is found. Vincent stands up to them, vowing to stop them from selling the collection, citing that it belongs to the McFaddens, who had built it over the years before he left (and Casper and Danny adding more to it even after their deaths).
Carrigan prepares to dispose of him in the same manner as Dibs. Casper, Kat, and Danny then sneakily point out her "unfinished business" citing that people only become ghosts because they have it. Carrigan declares that she has no unfinished business, saying that she has her treasure and her mansion, ergo everything she needs. She does an evil laugh again, but suddenly she starts to cross over to the afterlife against her will. She begs Jonathan to do something, but he is powerless to stop the process. Realizing she's been tricked, she berates Casper, Kat, and Danny calling them "rotten little brats" before she finally explodes, vanishing forever.
Kat and the McFaddens apologize to Jonathan for Carrigan's fate; while he is grieved over her loss, he tells them that she ultimately brought her fate upon herself. As they prepare the Lazarus for another resurrection attempt, Dr. Harvey and J.J., now ghosts return along with the Ghostly Trio. Initially, neither of them remember anything, until Kat triggers her father's memories with their pinky promise, and Jonathan shows his son a picture of their family. Casper and Danny sacrifice their last chance to be alive once more to restore Dr. Harvey and J.J.
Upstairs, the Halloween party kicks off, and everyone except Casper and Danny goes to see it. Jonathan gives both his and Carrigan's inheritance checks and the deed to Whipstaff to the Harveys and Vincent, before he and J.J. leave to retrieve his sister's body and try to find Dibs. As Vincent leaves to check on his brother and cousin, and Kat joins her party, Amber and Vic’s prank is thwarted by the Ghostly Trio, much to the excitement of everyone.
Up in their playroom, Casper and Danny are despondent over their lost chance at returning to life, despite Vincent's attempts to cheer them up. The three are soon visited by Ameila and Maizy, now angels who tell them that they met J.T. and Fredrick in heaven and, as a reward for their selfless sacrifice, they transform Casper and J.J. into human boys and make Vincent seventeen again (with Maizy making her seventeen as well), allowing them all to spend time together like this until ten o’clock.
Casper and Danny head to the dance, where the former dances with Kat and both reveal their identities to her. On a balcony, Vincent and Maizy slow dance together like back in their past.
Meanwhile, Amelia speaks with Harvey, revealing that she was so content alive that she had no unfinished business, encouraging him to move on. Amelia and Maizy depart as the clock chimes ten. Vincent returns to his regular age, and after Casper kisses Kat, he and Danny transform back into a ghosts, which scares off the party guests, leaving them, Vincent, and the Harveys to dance to the Ghostly Trio's music.
Cast[]
Live-action actors[]
- Christina Ricci as Kathleen "Kat" Harvey, Dr. James Harvey's teenage daughter and Casper's love interest, who has lost her mother and wants to make a friend.
- Bill Pullman as Dr. James Harvey, Kat Harvey's father who is a ghost therapist interacting with the living impaired to cross into the next dimension while hoping to find his deceased wife.
- Cathy Moriarty as Carrigan Crittenden, a spoiled, greedy woman who was angry about her late father's will to Whipstaff, until she discovers that the house contains treasure, and hires Dr. Harvey to get the ghosts out of the house in order to get it.
- Eric Idle as Paul "Dibs" Plutzker, Carrigan's assistant.
- Jeff Daniels as Jonathan Crittenden, Carrigan's older brother. Unlike his sister, he is not spoiled, and is hard working and a family man. He often acts as his sister's voice of reason, but is rarely, if ever, listened to by her.
- Jonathan Brandis as J.J. Crittenden, Jonathan's oldest child. He accompanies his father and aunt to Whipstaff to help search for the treasure. While something of a rebel, he is easy to get along with.
- Richard Hamilton as Vincent McFadden, a mysterious, elderly, frequent visitor of Whipstaff, and eventually is revealed to be Casper's cousin and Danny's older brother
- Ben Stein as Rugg, Carrigan's father's lawyer/executor of estate.
- Spencer Vrooman as Andreas
- Chauncey Leopardi as Nicky
- Wesley Thompson as Mr. Curtis
- Amy Brenneman as Amelia Harvey, James' deceased wife, as well as Kat's deceased mother whom appears as an angel and came before Casper and Danny and gave them his dream of coming back to life only for one night after they saved James and J.J.'s lives.
- Jane Russell as Maizy McFadden, Vincent's late wife, who stayed married to him for 77 years until her death a year prior to the film's event. She appears as an angel and comes before Vincent allowing them to become young again and spend time together for one night.
- Devon Sawa as Casper McFadden (human form)
- Brendan Ryan Barrett as Danny McFadden (human form)
- Leonardo DeCaprio as Vincent McFadden (young form)
- Kate Winslet as Maizy McFadden (young form)
- Garette Ratliff Henson as Vic DePhillippi, Kat's crush whom he along with his girlfriend Amber plans to sabotage Kat's party until they were scared off by the Ghostly Trio.
- Jessica Wesson as Amber Whitmire, Kat's rival and Vic's girlfriend whom she along with Vic plans to sabotage Kat's party until the Ghostly Trio scare them away.
Voice actors[]
- Malachi Pearson as Casper McFadden, a lonely ghost who was originally a 12-year-old boy who died from a pneumonia attack. He spends most of his afterlife in Whipstaff dealing with his ghouling uncles' antics while hoping to find a friend. He finds it with Kathleen "Kat" Harvey, while also falling in love with her.
- Courtland Mead as Danny McFadden, a young ghost who was originally Casper's 11-year-old cousin who died from pneumonia two days after him. Up until the return of Vincent and the arrival of the Harveys, he was Casper's only company in the manor.
- Joe Nipote as Stretch, the leading member of the Ghostly Trio and one of Casper, Danny, and Vincent's uncles who bonds with Dr. Harvey.
- Joe Alaskey as Stinkie, the second member of the Ghostly Trio as well as one of Casper, Danny, and Vincent's uncles who also bonds with Dr. Harvey.
- Brad Garrett as Fatso, the third member of the Ghostly Trio and one of Casper, Danny, and Vincent's uncles who bonds with Dr. Harvey.
- John Kassir as the Crypt Keeper
- Brock Winkless performed the puppetry for the Crypt Keeper in the film