#37 – An Unlikely Entry In My Loved Horror Movie List (89%)

This unpopular horror movie was released in 1999 and is a ghostly story of misdirection, cunning, trickery, and killer ghosts. ‘House on Haunted Hill’ is a remake of a movie from 1959 and saw a period when castle rock movies were remade. William Castle was the original director and was famous for terrifying audiences in person as well as on screen. This version was directed by William Malone who also had an entry on this list with feardotcom, but we won’t hold that against him. This was produced by Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver, Gilbert Adler, and Terry A. Castle. The screenplay was credited to Dick Beebe based on a story with the same name by Robb White. It was made on a budget of $19m and went on to return $40.8m from the box office but don’t let those numbers hide the fact that the critics hated it with IMDb giving it the higher of the two ratings with 5.7 out of 10 whilst Rotten Tomatoes hated it with just 30%. The film’s success spawned a sequel which I was scared to see but not for the good reasons but for fear of how bad it was going to be. I think my expectations were so low that it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting but there were some gaping plot holes and was generally panned by all that saw it back in 2007. Jumping back to this movie it had a host of names starring that went on to bigger and better things namely Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan. I will come back to the actors at the end of this review, but I think I’ve painted the picture enough to move onto the plot.

Back in 1931 at the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, run by a sadistic Doctor called Dr Richard Vannacutt. The patients had had enough of the violence and torture against them and revolted killing many of the staff before the lockdown procedure torched the building killing all the inmates and leaving just five survivors from the staff. Jumping to 1999 Evelyn Stockard-Price is disinterested with her marriage to Steven Price who is an amusement park mogul terrifying people across the world. Evelyn seeing the institute on a documentary decide this spooky old place would be a good place for her birthday party and she sends her list of invites over to her husband on an email. As he organises it, he switches off and leaves. The computer restarts on his own and resets the invite list. Moving onto the night itself the guest arrive with king of terrifying people having set up a challenge that he will give $1,000,000 to anyone that survives the night. If they run in terror the money is divided by those remaining. All they have to do is survive. The five guests who have arrived are believed by each Evelyn and Steven to have been invited by the other consists of a film producer, baseball player, former TV personality, a physician and Watson Pritchett the buildings owner who is convinced the house is haunted and is ready to leave as soon as he has been paid. Even when offered a $1m opportunity he is not interested he just wants the money for the rent, and he is gone. Except the house goes into full lockdown meaning no one can escape, including him. This was part of the fire cleansing of the inmates. The spooky events increase through the night continues with suspicions growing from each other, let alone the ghosts creating tension all around and everyone scared of everyone else.

The actors are so well cast in this its unreal. Geoffrey Rush is a perfect substitute for Vincent Price and the others are all just as good. There are some clever shots as well as a deluge of CGI in places and the jerky ghosts’ movements are scary as hell. When the Dr Vannacutt ghost turns up its terrifying and the fact you don’t trust anyone yourself let alone those characters who are in the mist of all this. In this reviewer’s opinion he is scarier than the big thing at the end. The characters are so well played comparing and sparring with each other all in fear that one may want to kill the other to get more money for themselves whilst you believe each one is playing their own game, but you may not necessarily knowing their motives. This is a great horror story which is clever and inventive and why people do not like it I don’t know why. It is scary and gory in places and as a horror movie it just works and for me that is all you need to make a great success. It did ok at the box office and the same studio’s also come up with the thirteen ghosts remake of a castle rock movie. So, they had some success with them. If you haven’t seen it, I would recommend it, but I am not going to force the issue on this one. If you don’t want to bother, then I am happy keeping this gem a secret for myself.

Next up is a comedy in a gory horrific way…