Name: Ghost Rider
Released: 2007-02-16
Duration: 1 h 50 min

Key Story Points

•Johnny Blaze sells his soul to Mephistopheles to save his father, who dies anyway

•Mephistopheles makes Johnny his Ghost Rider and sends him after his son Blackheart, who wants the contract of San Venganza

•The Caretaker is Carter Slade, an Old West Ghost Rider who hid the contract

•Blackheart absorbs the thousand souls, and Johnny burns them out of him with the Penance Stare

•Johnny turns down Mephistopheles' offer to lift the curse

The full story

In 1986, seventeen-year-old Johnny Blaze signs his soul over to Mephistopheles to cure his father's cancer. The cancer is gone the next morning, and his father dies that day anyway, in a stunt that goes wrong. Johnny leaves town, and leaves Roxanne Simpson, the girl he loves.

Years later Johnny is a famous motorcycle stuntman who keeps walking away from crashes he shouldn't survive. He runs into Roxanne, now a TV reporter, just as Mephistopheles' son Blackheart arrives on Earth with three fallen angels, the Hidden, looking for the lost contract of San Venganza, which binds a thousand evil souls. Mephistopheles turns Johnny into his Ghost Rider and promises him his soul back if he stops Blackheart.

At night Johnny's flesh burns away to a flaming skull. He kills one of the Hidden, uses the Penance Stare to make a mugger feel all the pain he has caused, and learns what he's become from the Caretaker, a gravedigger who knows the Rider's history. Blackheart frames him for murder, kills his friend Mack, and takes Roxanne, demanding the contract in exchange.

The Caretaker reveals that he is Carter Slade, a Texas Ranger and an earlier Ghost Rider, who hid the contract instead of delivering it. He rides with Johnny to San Venganza one last time, then fades away. Blackheart takes in the thousand souls and calls himself Legion. Johnny, powerless at sunrise, is saved when Roxanne knocks Blackheart off him with Slade's shotgun; Johnny shoots him and turns the Penance Stare on him, and the souls inside burn Blackheart out. Mephistopheles offers to lift the curse. Johnny refuses, and rides off to use it against him.