SHE’S BACK (1989) *

Carrie Fisher was only six years removed from Return of the Jedi when she made She’s Back.  While Harrison Ford was working with Steven Spielberg on the set of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Fisher was starring in this painfully unfunny comedy ghost movie from the director of Robot Holocaust, Tim Kincaid and writer Buddy (Combat Shock) Giovinazzo.  Fisher’s history of drug and alcohol abuse is well-documented.  I’m not sure if she had hit bottom yet in regard to drugs and alcohol, but this is definitively the nadir of her acting career. 

Fisher and her hubby Robert (Death Wish 5:  The Face of Death) Joy move into a crime-ridden neighborhood.  The first night in their new home, they are immediately terrorized by punks who break in, rob the place, and kill Carrie.  She soon returns from the grave to convince her spineless husband to get revenge on the men who killed her. 

From then on, it becomes a comedy version of Death Wish, except starring a henpecked sitcom husband and a wisecracking ghost sidekick.  If you thought the scenes of Fisher in white make-up bickering with Joy were bad, wait till you see him and his idiot neighbor fighting back against the punks using makeshift homemade weapons.  The final confrontation with the punks is downright painful and even though there’s some OK gore, it’s just too dumb to even work.  (There’s a gun made from a sink that shoots coils that somehow drill through people’s skulls?!?)

Joy does what he can with the awful material and Fisher remains professional throughout, although neither of them come close to saving this mess.  What I wouldn’t give to be a fly on Fisher’s dressing room wall when she was making this.  I haven’t read Fisher’s memoir, Postcards from the Edge, but if there isn’t an entire chapter devoted to this movie, then what’s the point?

The comedy elements are woefully miscalculated.  Joy and Fisher are fine actors, but they visibly struggle trying to make the clunky premise work.  It doesn’t help that the movie looks like a cheap sitcom and the characters behave like they’re in a bizarre Off-Broadway play as they constantly shout at one another.  

She’s Back is an oddity to be sure, but not in a good way.  For die-hard fans of Fisher, it may work as a curiosity piece.  A morbid curiosity piece.