"Haunted Mansion" is a Ghoulish Mess **

Someone needs to start an intervention. Because we love Eddie Murphy. We loved him as Buckwheat in Saturday Night Live. We thrilled to the adventures of Axel Foley in "Beverly Hills Cop." He made us laugh in "Trading Places" and the first "48 Hours." But this career needs a makeover.

"The Haunted Mansion" is the last in Disney's theme park trilogy, that began forgettably with "The Country Bears" and roared to life with "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl."

My biggest problem with "The Haunted Mansion" is that the movie suffers from acute schizophrenia. It seems to want to deliver thrills and chills, and then remembers that Eddie Murphy is on hand and makes an effort to be funny.

A few weeks ago, I was watching a tape of Warner Oland's detective film "Charlie Chan in Egypt." You remember the Fox Movie Channel controversy of last summer, stating that the Charlie Chan films couldn't be shown because of political correctness?

Well, there was a black character actor whose stage name was Stepin Fetchit, and he was a co-star in "Charlie Chan in Egypt," and his primary function is to wander around the tombs and dark passageways with his eyes wide open and screaming in comical terror.

This is charming in a 1935 era B-movie. But it's a bit unsettling to see Eddie Murphy basically serving the same purpose.

"Las Vegas" beauty Marsha Thomason is wonderful as Murphy's wife, a woman who resembles the long lost love of "Mansion"'s resident ghost (a dashing Nathaniel Parker). Seems to me that "Dark Shadows" did that theme first, and several movies have ripped it off since, but I guess this plot is still fresh somewhere.

There are two screaming kids who are absolutely astonishing in their lack of charisma. My favorite part of the film is when the little brats get locked in the trunk.

The great character actor Terence Stamp is on hand, mainly to crop up suddenly and frighteningly a la Lurch ("The Addams Family").

Yes, the ride fixtures are in place; the hitchhiking ghosts; the singing busts, the "Grim, Grinning Ghosts" theme song, and the disembodied head in the glass bowl (Jennifer Tilly, who has the films' best lines).

Don Knotts was originally cast as the mansion's caretaker, but the part was deemed to small so it was snipped out. Pity. While Wallace Shawn provides comic relief, his role could easily have gone to the still adept Knotts.

Anyway, back to our intervention. Let's sit Eddie down and have a film festival. "Trading Places." "Beverly Hills Cop." "48 Hours." "The Nutty Professor." "Dr. Dolittle." Then stack those three DVD's against the pile of flotsam that he's subjected us to of late. "The Golden Child." "The Adventures of Pluto Nash." "I-Spy." "The Klumps." "Dr. Dolittle 2." Eddie. Stop the madness.