House on Haunted Hill
USA 1999
Reviewed by Kim Newman
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
1931. At the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, an art deco fortress atop a Californian cliff, abused patients rebel against the sadistic and murderous Dr Vannacutt. He traps them inside and allows them to burn to death. Only five staff members escape.
The present. Evelyn, wife of amusement-park tycoon Stephen Price, convinces her husband to rent the institute, now the property of Watson Pritchett, for her birthday party. A mysterious force hacks into Stephen's computer and changes his guest list. On the night of the party, Price welcomes the guests: office-worker Sara (who stole her boss' invite), baseball player Eddie, aspirant celebrity Melissa and physician Blackburn. Price offers 1 million to anyone who survives a night in the house, which Pritchett explains is alive and malicious. Shutters trap the guests and Schecter, Price's special-effects man, is killed before he can do any of the planned stunts. Evelyn is conspiring with Blackburn, her lover, to have Price murdered by framing him for her own apparent death and so terrorising the guests that one of them (Sara) will shoot him. However, the Darkness, a supernatural force, has brought together descendants of the five 1931 escapees to die and fulfil the curse. All but Sara and Eddie are killed. They are saved by Pritchett's ghost, who has resisted joining the Darkness and opens a shutter so they can escape.
Review
Producers Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver and Gilbert Adler are veterans of the cable series Tales from the Crypt and the films (Demon Knight, Bordello of Blood) spun off from it. They turn their attention here to one of the first film-makers to be influenced by the 50s horror comics which inspired the Crypt series: producer (and sometime director) William Castle. Remembered for gimmicks like Emergo (a skeleton puppet dangled over the audience) and Percepto (small seat-buzzers to tingle spines), Castle really came into his own as a horrormeister with House on Haunted Hill (1958). He amused himself with a rollercoaster pacing (wittily literalised in this remake, whose protagonist is a rollercoaster tycoon) piling shock on shock. But he also combined solid old-fashioned horror premises with cynical characterisation and casually lunatic plot devices to provoke constantly a reaction of befuddled astonishment.
Though it contains the bones of the old Robb White script, this new Haunted Hill adds a genuinely supernatural plot wound around the old business of the duplicitous wife contriving to knock off her husband but being one-upped by his even more ingenious counterplots. It's a bit like having two skeletons in one body. The film shifts rapidly from the explicable but far-fetched business to the plot-thread about the house's wispy blob of damned souls seeking further victims, so both strands suffer. However, the try-anything approach of writer-director William Malone (another Crypt alumnus) is actually very much in the spirit of Castle (whose daughter Terry joins the production team), and so this noisy, scrappy, effects-heavy rethink manages to respect the original's intentions far more than such recent remakes as the 1999 versions of The Mummy and The Haunting. There's no point in complaining that the blood pools, dismemberment and rampaging spooks cheapen the purity of a property that was always supposed to be disreputable, and Malone may even be essaying a further homage by yoking in some of the apparitions from Castle's Thirteen Ghosts (1963).
The 1958 film house (a Frank Lloyd Wright exterior) was built around one of Vincent Price's first elegant, verge-of-camp horror performances. The new development (a wonderful streamlined cliff-top shape) luckily secures Geoffrey Rush playing a character named after the old star. With his sad eyes and a pencil moustache, Rush is the image of Price. Malone has him quoting Vincent Price's key line ("The house is alive!") from Roger Corman's House of Usher (1960), another major Price horror film, and even throws in a mad dream sequence with tossed-around severed heads from the Corman-Price Tales of Terror (1962). The super Famke Janssen, like Carol Ohmart, stands up to her domineering co-star and has one wonderful moment when, improvising as her murder scheme falls apart, she flirtatiously suggests to her dim lover she has a crazy idea that might work if a fresh corpse can be procured - and then stabs him in the stomach with a scalpel as a demonstration.
The supporting stooges have no more chance of surviving than they did in the old film, though Saturday Night Live alumnus Chris Kattan delivers an extended homage to Elisha Cook Jr's speciality, squirming alcoholic cowardliness, and pleasingly saves the day in spectral form. The mix of laughs, shocks and gruesomeness is much the same as in the two Tales from the Crypt movies, but Malone coaxes a slightly fresher flavour, taking on board the influence of David Fincher and even Lars von Trier.
The opening asylum revolt - a close-shot of a pencil being sharpened is enough to tip off the squeamish viewer to shut their eyes for a minute or so - is guignol nastiness of the first order. This strong meat recurs as the ghostliness begins in earnest, with Price trapped in a basement isolation chamber, bombarded with flash-cut images and monsters (one a top Dick Smith design made for but cut from Ghost Story) that, along with a loud soundtrack of groans and rumbles, make a good case for the hit-you-over-the-head style of horror movie in an era where the subtle creepy chill is in the ascendant.
Credits
- Director
- William Malone
- Producers
- Robert Zemeckis
- Joel Silver
- Gilbert Adler
- Screenplay
- Dick Beebe
- Based on a story by
- Robb White
- Director of Photography
- Rick Bota
- Editor
- Anthony Adler
- Production Designer
- David F. Klassen
- Music
- Don Davis
- ©Warner Bros.
- Production Companies
- Warner Bros. presents
- a Dark Castle Entertainment production
- Executive Producers
- Dan Cracchiolo
- Steve Richards
- Co-producer
- Terry Castle
- Associate Producer
- Edward Tapia
- Production Co-ordinator
- Paul Croghan
- Unit Production Manager
- F.A. Miller
- Locations Manager
- Deborah J. Page
- Post-production
- Supervisor:
- Mark L. Mitchell
- Co-ordinator:
- Eva J. Winkle
- 2nd Unit Director
- Gregory Brazzel
- Assistant Directors
- Scott Cameron
- Simone Farber
- Joseph E. Lotito
- Insert/2nd Unit:
- Maria K. Battle-Campbell
- Dinah Lehoven
- Script Supervisor
- Mary Anne Seward
- Casting
- Lora Kennedy
- Associate:
- Kristy Sager
- Insert/2nd Unit Director of Photography
- Christian Sebalt
- Camera Operators
- Chris Moseley
- Stephen T. Ullman
- Steadicam Operator
- Stephen T. Ullman
- Digital/Visual Effects
- 4-Ward Productions
- Digital/Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Robert Skotak
- Visual Effects Cinematographer:
- Dennis Skotak
- Digital/Visual Effects Editor:
- Bill Black
- Digital Effects Producer:
- Paul Taglianetti
- Prod Co-ordinator/
Director of Photography: - Mark Shelton
- Senior Digital Artist/Whodoo Effects:
- Helena Packer
- Whodoo Digital Effects Producer:
- Christy Pacheco
- 3D Animators:
- Joe Conti
- Steward Burris
- Digital Artist:
- Rich Lieu
- Model Makers:
- Mark Cadicamo
- Jim Davidson
- Tyson Eckmeier
- Howard Harnett
- Sota Effects
- Jim Towler
- Optical Effects/CGI Compositing
- Imagination FX
- Digital/Visual Effects
- Vision Art Design & Animation
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Marc Kolbe
- Digital Effects Producer:
- Richard J. Cook
- Compositing Supervisor:
- Dorene Haver
- Animation Supervisor:
- Daniel Kramer
- Senior Animators:
- Rocco Passionino
- Christina Drahos
- Digital/Visual Effects
- Modern Videofilm
- Visual Effects Producer:
- Annemarie D. Griggs
- Lead Digital Artist:
- Brent Gilmartin
- Digital Artists:
- Rick Cortés
- Teri Harrison
- Rick Shick
- Creative Supervisor:
- Robert McInnis
- Scanning/Recording Supervisor:
- Dan Hamilton
- Special Effects
- Bellissimo/Belardinelli Effects
- Supervisor:
- T. 'Brooklyn' Bellissimo
- Co-ordinator:
- Charlie Belardinelli
- Key Effects:
- Thomas Zell
- Shannon Thompson
- Effects Technicians:
- Jerry Donegan
- Mickey Duff
- Steven Gold
- Frankie Iudica Jr
- Christy Sumner
- Malia Thompson
- Johnny Franco
- Joseph Heffernan
- Visual Consultant
- J. Michael Riva
- Supervising Art Director
- Richard F. Mays
- Set Decorator
- Lauri Gaffin
- Scenic Artist
- Stan M. Olexiewicz
- Costume Designer
- Ha Nguyen
- Wardrobe Supervisors
- Randall Thropp
- Kimberly Guenther-Durkin
- Key Make-up Artist
- Joyce B. Etheredge
- Make-up
- Artists:
- Howard Berger
- William Corso
- Inset/2nd Unit:
- William Corso
- Special Make-up Effects
- Robert Kurtzman
- Gregory Nicotero
- Howard Berger
- Special Effects Make-up
- Shannon Shea
- Howard Berger
- Garrett Immez
- Eyless Apparition Design
- Dick Smith
- Key Hairstylist
- Patricia Vecchio
- Hairstylists
- Faith C. Vecchio
- Dianne Pepper
- Main Title Design
- The Picture Mill
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Score Performer
- Seattlemusic
- Synthesizers Recorded/Mixed
- Larry Mah
- Orchestrations
- Eric Lundborg
- Ira Hearshen
- Don Davis
- Music Editor
- Joe E. Rand
- Music Scoring Engineer
- Armin Steiner
- Soundtrack
- "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart, performed by Marilyn Manson
- Sound Design
- Dane A. Davis
- Additional:
- Eric Lindeman
- Sound Mixer
- Vince Garcia
- Re-recording Mixers
- Gregory H. Watkins
- Kevin E. Carpenter
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Dane A. Davis
- Co:
- Julia Evershade
- Dialogue Editor
- Charles W. Ritter
- Sound Effects Editor
- Eric Lindeman
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Tom O'Connell
- Foley
- Supervisor:
- Tom Brennan
- Artists:
- John Roesch
- Hilda Hodges
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Gregory Brazzel
- Cast
- Geoffrey Rush
- Stephen Price
- Famke Janssen
- Evelyn Price
- Taye Diggs
- Eddie
- Ali Larter
- Sara
- Bridgette Wilson
- Melissa Marr
- Peter Gallagher
- Blackburn
- Chris Kattan
- Watson Pritchett
- Max Perlich
- Schecter
- Jeffrey Combs
- Doctor Vannacutt
- Dick Beebe
- male nurse
- Slavitza Jovan
- twisted nurse
- Lisa Loeb
- Channel 3 reporter
- James Marsters
- Channel 3 cameraman
- Jeannette Lewis
- Price's secretary
- Janet Tracy Keijser
- girl on wires
- Peter Graves
- himself
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Warner Bros Distributors (UK)
- 8,343 feet
- 92 minutes 42 seconds
- Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound/SDDS
- Colour by
- Technicolor