DIRECTOR
William Malone
SCREENWRITER
Dick Beebe
based
on a screenplay by
Robb White
PRODUCERS
Gilbert Adler
Joel Silver
Robert Zemeckis
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Rick Bota
MUSIC
Don Davis
EDITOR
Anthony Adler
CAST
Geoffrey Rush (Steven H. Price)
Famke Janssen (Evelyn)
Ali Larter (Sara)
Taye Diggs (Eddie)
Chris Kattan (Pritchett)
Peter Gallagher (Blackburn)
Bridgette Wilson (Melissa)
Max Perlich (Carl)
Jeffrey Combs (Dr. Vannacutt)
Lisa Loeb (Reporter)
James Marsters (Cameraman)
Peter Graves (Himself)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 96m
U.S. release: October 29, 1999
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
site
Other William
Malone movies
reviewed on this website:
- Feardotcom
|
One
of the many sins of last summer's oafish remake The
Haunting -- still my candidate for the year's worst movie
-- is that the memory of its awfulness may keep people away from
this year's other remake of an old haunted-house film, House
on Haunted Hill, which is actually pretty entertaining. This
update of the 1958 camp-horror chestnut by William Castle jacks
up the shock effects and the booty (the reward for surviving
the night in the godforsaken house is now $1,000,000, two zeroes
more than in the original). It's an unpretentious and cheerfully
trashy night at the movies; horror fans could do worse, and lately
they've had to.
Amusement-park entrepreneur Steven H. Price (Geoffrey Rush, whose
character is named in honor of Vincent Price, who filled this
role in the original) is planning a birthday party for his beautiful
and hateful wife Evelyn (Famke Janssen), who wants to throw the
bash inside a run-down house that used to be a mental institution.
This hospital has an ornate backstory: It used to be run by the
mad Dr. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs in a performance without dialogue,
unfortunately for fans of Re-Animator), who was fond of
performing cruel surgical experiments on the inmates until they
rioted in 1931. A fire was set, the hospital's "lockdown"
mechanism was triggered to keep anyone from escaping, and everyone
burned to death inside. Great place to throw a birthday party
68 years later.
The people on Price's guest list are deleted and replaced mysteriously
by seemingly random outsiders: former baseball player Eddie (Taye
Diggs), production assistant Sara (Ali Larter), TV personality
Melissa Marr (Bridgette Wilson), and stoic Dr. Blackburn (Peter
Gallagher). Also along for the ride: the fearful Pritchett (Chris
Kattan, doing a Jeff Goldblum imitation), who owns the house
and is renting it to Price, and Price's assistant Carl (Max Perlich,
cashing an easy check -- all he does is push buttons and eat
sandwiches). They, along with Price and Evelyn, are soon "locked
down" in the house, which seems to turn on them with the
vengefulness of the insane -- or the dead.
This House on Haunted Hill feels a lot like a 90-minute
episode of HBO's Tales from the Crypt, as well it should:
The director, William Malone, helmed several episodes of the
series, and the movie is the first production of Dark Castle,
the new company formed by Crypt producers Robert Zemeckis
and Joel Silver to put out medium-budget horror films. The movie
doesn't skimp on the gore -- at least two people are relieved
of their heads, and one poor bastard gets his face scooped out
-- and there are some genuinely creepy bits, such as the opening
inmate riot and the sequence when Price is locked into a sort
of sensory-overload chamber that drives him temporarily mad.
True, the movie could have been fresher. About five scenes too
many depend on characters wandering around in dark cobwebby places;
I'm all for that, as long as it's not run into the ground. I
expected a juicier performance from Geoffrey Rush, who doesn't
camp it up as much as you'd think he'd want to (he was more fun
in Mystery
Men). And it's hard to defend a film that wastes oddball
talents like Combs, Perlich, and singer Lisa Loeb and Buffy
vampire James Marsters (Spike) in eyeblink roles. (I didn't even
know he was James Marsters until I read the credits.)
Overall, though, House on Haunted Hill keeps the scares
and laughs coming (Chris Kattan provides most of the laughs).
It's a cheesy throwaway horror flick, but it's a tight
cheesy throwaway horror flick. You won't be sorry you saw it
-- even if, two days later, you also won't remember you saw it. |