Amazing World of Ghosts (1978) – Wheeler Dixon.

'Are ghosts really aliens from outer space?'

Wheeler Dixon's cult 'documentary' on the existence of supernatural phenomena provides all the empiric truth of a biblical parable, this fascinating conflation of myth, lore, and outright ballyhoo is a key example of vintage schlock science. This sublimely hyperbolic schlock-doc proves the existence of the preternatural realm, about as conclusively as the Turin Shroud provides incontrovertible evidence of god. The lurid formula for most mondo documentaries is inviolate; plentiful stock footage/blurry photos, noisome library music, and doomy electronic noodling, plus a melodramatic, portentous, deliciously spurious narration. With fact as anathema, the entertainment value of Dixon's wickedly goofy Amazing World of Ghosts are the bravura levels of arrant nonsense, duplicity, and hysterical anti-science, poorly masqueraded as truth.

One of the more amusingly erroneous inconsistencies is utilising the iconic shot of Big Foot from the long debunked Patterson-Gimlin film, with the narrator dramatically claiming it to be absolutely proof positive of the elusive Yeti, captured against the icy Nepalese tundra!!!???? The crass misrepresentation of source material is no less bold, as it is glaringly specious, providing one of the more innately jocular elements of Wheeler Dixon's blithely truthless expose of the supernatural Amazing World of Ghosts. I can state with reasonable surety that the 'strange orbs' manifesting within the haunted estate are snooker balls in close-up. Surely, even in 1978, the concept of a 'super-sonic UFO' was anachronistic? While I don't believe Amazing World of Ghosts is a trip beyond all human imagination, it's certainly a trip!