Rish Outfield's reviews
A college professor with a belief in the occult is approached by a woman who lives in a haunted bed and breakfast. He becomes personally involved in her unusual situation and finds out the mystery behind the ghost that walks her halls at night.
This bounty hunter is my kind of scum, fearless and inventive.
This was a fairly effective picture with some eerie music. Nicely, it relied on mostly traditional, practical ghost effects (something that doesn't happen so much anymore, with the damn computer-generated stuff and all). I expected a much more frightening picture (due to the horrors depicted on the cover), and found instead a leisurely, cerebral ghost story that wasn't great, but wasn't awful. It could have been scary, with a nice potential, but seemed to almost purposely-shy away from that. It starred Paul LeMat, who I remember from American Graffiti, but haven't seen at all since then. He's really quite likable, in a second-favourite uncle sort of way. Cool dude David Warner has a small part, a glorified cameo, really, but he makes the most of it, as usual. I really like that guy.
Best Scare: A character finds a human head, which I should have expected, but it startled me anyway.
I'd Recommend It To: Ghost story buffs tired of seeing the really good ones.

The tyranist's thoughts
I like ghost stories. I like the generally dignified way most ghost stories are told and that the traditional ghost story relies more on a slightly skewed reality than rampaging evil. This is a ghost story, but in the end they try the rampaging evil thing and I found that tremendously disappointing.
I guess I've had Haunted on my mind lately because the last two ghost stories I've seen on film have reminded me of it. I ought to go back and watch/read it again. This one was filmed shortly after Haunted was printed so I doubt there's too much influence. There are, however, a couple of similarities that bear noticing. And really, they only work in Grave Secrets' favor.
The atmosphere was nice, but the on-the-cheap production values kind of hurt the movie for me. While the ghost effects were really nice and well-thought out, the place was so dingy and lacked so much of the refinement that I like to see in ghost stories. With decent acting and a reasonable script, I would have expected a little more. In the end it just reminded me of a lot of other cheap horror that was made in the '80s.
If you like ghost stories there is something here for you, but not much. I doubt I'll see it again.