House on Haunted Hill [1999]

Geoffrey Rush photo

Review

Written by Dick Bebbe
Story by Robb White Produced by Gil Adler, Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver
Directed by William Malone
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Peter Gallagher, Bridgette Wilson, Chris Kattan, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Jeffrey Combs

I'm sitting here, jazzed from having just seen the remake of House On Haunted Hill, still shaking my head over most of the current reviews--some of the most sniveling and wrong-headed in recent memory. Crikey, these folks get steamed when there's no advance screenings and they have to fork out ten bucks like the rest of us! One predictably tossed out the usual "lack of character development" dig that's always lobbed at these kinds of movies. Still another suggested that Geoffrey Rush give his Academy Award back. For cryin' out loud, it's just a goofball horror romp that hopes to deliver a few honest chills and laughs. It's not trying to usurp Night Of The Living Dead from the Museum Of Modern Art's film collection! Lighten up--it's Halloween!

In proud William Castle tradition, House On Haunted Hill thumbs its severed, maggot-infested nose at the cozy conventions of modern Middle Of The Road film "quality" ("This one has Oscar® written all over it!", as the ads usually go), and gleefully revels in the cheapest of shocks and one-liners, and never misses an opportunity to punctuate a subtle, moody image with one of complete disgust. It's also frequently witty, honestly scary, and visually inventive, even amidst KNB latex beasties stolen from Jacob's Ladder, and a murderous CGI-"whatever" that tracks through the corridors like a combination of The Creeping Terror and something coughed up from a chain smoker's lung. Check out the show-stopping sequence in which Mr. Price is locked in an audio-visual assault chamber and you'll see production design, editing, and imagery that's pure pop-surrealist poetry.

Granted, this one had the potential to be a loser. Not another <shudder> big budget, big studio remake of a low-budget cult fave! More state of the art FX replacing seat-of-the-pants invention? There's the police lineup of pretty, Gen-X friendly faces on the generic one-sheet. We already went down this road this past summer, didn't we, with a Giant Gila Monster-sized dud called The Haunting?

My answer is a hearty "no". From the niftiest opening title sequence of the year so far, to the now-standard climactic CGI onslaught, it's clear that the filmmakers sought to honour the tradition of Castle's gimmicky camp classics, and not merely sell a soundtrack album (who needs another copy of Marilyn Manson's cover of "Sweet Dreams" again, anyway?).

Wisely, when someone at Warner got the idea to remake the 1958 tale of marital erosion and acid baths, they turned to the pros to bring it to the screen. Director William Malone, who made his directorial debut with the functional 1980 "Alien"-in-the-sewers chiller Scared To Death, had spent years perfecting his talent to combine yuks and yecchs on HBO's stylish anthology series Tales From The Crypt. Series producers Robert Zemeckis, Joel Silver, and Gil Adler oversaw the production of the remake, too (I'm looking forward to more from their new Dark Castle production company). The rigors and limitations of television production have served this film well: Malone makes the most of a simple premise, small ensemble, and a few (admittedly, expensive) sets.

Talk Back

Like the best horror remakes--Carpenter's The Thing, Cronenberg's The Fly, and Russell's The Blob--House On Haunted Hill expands on the original scenario while retaining many of the signatures that made the initial film version so memorable. There's still the homicidal tendencies of the henpecked- hubby-and-disgruntled-wife leads (the conniving husband is named "Mr. Price" in a nod to the star of the original) giving edge to the wife's birthday party in the allegedly "haunted" locale as the setup. The invited guests of varied professions hoping to make a few easy bucks. Malone even tosses in the little coffins with the handguns inside.

Screenwriter Dick Bebbe updates not only the amount of the prize (one million dollars, up from ten-thousand), but sweetens the potential for twists by making "Mr. Price" a wealthy tycoon of amusement park rides. He also adds a grisly history to the "Haunted Hill" location (now an abandoned asylum with a scandalous history) that ties in with the lineage of each of the key characters, giving the story a definitively supernatural spin that the original didn't concern itself with. In Castle's version, the house was the location of seven murders, and any ghosts were merely the invention of Vincent Price's prankster messing with the guests' heads (in a role I'm sure Castle identified with immensely).

I'm not sure if "Haunted Hill 1999" needed so much convoluted backstory, as the Agatha Christie-scenario, alternating character allegiances, and the is-it-real-or-not funhouse illusions are quite enough to fill two hours. Actually, the whole "the house is alive and coming for its family" angle is damn near identical--and about as tepid-- to that of DeBont's Haunting remake, a rival production from which Malone and company chose to distance themselves.

Nothing can kill a film quite like unrealized--or unrealistic--expectations of what we demand it should ultimately deliver. As The Phantom Menace and The Blair Witch Project have (hopefully) taught us all by now--come opening weekend, it's just a movie. In the end, people it's the movie "they" have made, and not the uber-idealized, imaginary life-changer we've all produced in our collective heads after months of teasers, trailers, Internet hoopla, film festival fallout, and magazine cover stories?

In an age where any backyard epic has the chance to become the very Savior Of The Medium (and by association, the recipient of a ferocious backlash), it's heartening to know that films can still creep up on us from season to season, promising little, and yet delivering what really matters: unpretentious entertainment.

Photo Gallery

- Robert L

Talk Back