The Ghosts of Buxley Hall

Release Date: December 21 – December 28, 1980

Watch Date: October 3 – October 4, 2025

“Get ready for high jinks and high spirits as a trio of friendly ghosts scare up a hilariously haunting tale of friendship, bravery, and teamwork. The ghostly residents of 100-year-old Buxley Hall conjure up some supernatural mayhem when the financially strapped school is forced to allow girls into the boys-only academy. Their only hope is 13-year-old Jeremy, a shy cade who’s an heir to a fortune. But when the ghosts learn that the boy’s conniving aunt is out to steal Jeremy’s inheritance so she can buy the school and demolish it, they charge to his rescue.”

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Look, I’m gonna level with you, this isn’t a good movie. It was boring, Bob and I really struggled to stay awake during it, and in fact failed, which is why it ended up taking two days to watch.

It’s an incredibly forced premise, because how do you maintain an all-boys military school while also having girls attend classes but the girls don’t have to participate in the military aspect at all and you seem to have two principals? Just from a parental standpoint that feels like you’re asking for trouble. And then you’ve got three ghosts who’ve never acted like ghosts before this, just happy to sit in their portraits. I guess that makes sense? But if I was sentient I would probably feel the urge to move around more than once every hundred years, you know?

But what really got me, honestly, the part of this movie that I could not get over, was the aunt. She goes very quickly from, we have to make my nephew fail at school so we can use his inheritance to fund our lavish lifestyle to oh also we better kill him before he turns 21 so he doesn’t actually inherit and we get all the money. And her husband seems just as shocked by this casual mention of murder as I felt. And here’s the thing, they’re going to go on and not really touch on the fact that the aunt is planning to eventually murder Jeremy. It’s all about the school, making the school look bad, making Jeremy not like the school so he leaves the school. Making the bank think she has the money to buy the school so she can demolish the school so that Jeremy can’t go to the school and her brother will be forced to give up guardianship because I guess there’s only military all boys school in America.

There’s also this subplot kind of where the female ghost, the put upon traditional wife, sees the girls in the academy with their 80s freedoms and rights and gets a little uppity with her husband, not just wanting to listen to him, and while that’s a cute idea, she also did keep deferring to him for at least most of the movie, so I don’t love that either.

All in all, I could see why you’d watch this if you had a lot of nostalgia for it, and I do think my kids would have been more into it as a family friendly Halloween movie, but if you’re an adult just trying to binge all the Disney Halloween movies, like we – slowly – are, then be prepared with some coffee or energy drinks before you throw this one on.