• Source: House on Haunted Hill (1999 film)

House on Haunted Hill is a 1999 American supernatural horror film directed by William Malone and starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan. The plot follows a group of strangers who are invited to a party at an abandoned insane asylum, where they are offered $1 million each by an amusement park mogul if they are able to survive the night. Produced by Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver, it is a remake of the 1959 film of the same title directed by William Castle. The film marked the producing debut of Dark Castle Entertainment, a production company that went on to produce numerous other horror films, including additional remakes.
Screenwriter Dick Beebe adapted the film's script from Robb White's 1959 original, updating elements of the story and introducing a significant supernatural component which was absent from the original film. Filming took place in Los Angeles in early 1999, with famed make-up artists Gregory Nicotero and Dick Smith providing the film's special effects.
House on Haunted Hill was released on Halloween weekend in 1999. In the tradition of William Castle's theater gimmicks, Warner Bros. supplied promotional scratchcards to cinemas showing the film, offering ticket buyers a chance to win a money prize, similar to the movie's characters. The film was a commercial success, opening at number one at the U.S. box office, and grossing $65 million worldwide. It received largely negative reviews from critics, with some deriding its use of special effects and gore, though it did receive some praise for its performances and horror elements.
In 2007, the film was followed by a direct-to-DVD sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill, which was released in both rated and unrated editions.




Plot


In 1931, the patients at the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane revolt with a prison riot against the staff, headed by the sadistic Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt. The patients start a fire which engulfs the building, killing all of the inmates and all but five of Vannacutt’s staff.
In 1999, Evelyn Stockard-Price is in a disintegrating marriage with Stephen Price, an amusement park mogul who loves playing tricks. At Evelyn's insistence, Price stages her birthday party at the long-abandoned hospital. The building's owner, Watson Pritchett, is convinced it is evil, having lived there as a child when it was converted to a private residence. Five guests arrive for the party: film producer Jennifer Jenzen, baseball player Eddie Baker, former television personality Melissa Marr, physician Donald Blackburn, and Pritchett himself. The guests are not the ones Price invited and neither of the Prices know who they are. Despite this, Price continues the party's advertised theme, offering $1 million to each guest who remains in the house until morning; those who flee or perish forfeit their $1 million to the others.
The building's security system is mysteriously tripped, locking everyone inside – a stunt which Price blames on Evelyn. Evelyn and Steven are at one another’s throats, each trying to kill the other. Jennifer, Eddie, and Pritchett search the basement for the security system's control panel. While exploring the labyrinthine basement, Jennifer unknowingly becomes separated from Eddie and confesses that her real name is Sara Wolfe, the recently fired assistant to the real Jennifer. She impersonated Jennifer, hoping to win the prize money. Shortly after, Sara is nearly pulled into a tank of blood by a doppelgänger impersonating Eddie, but the real Eddie arrives in time to save her. Melissa subsequently disappears, leaving behind a massive trail of blood and a video camera that shows brief, ambiguous footage of her being dragged off-screen. Price visits his assistant Schechter, who is supposed to be managing the party stunts, but finds him horribly mutilated. On the surveillance monitor he sees the ghost of Dr. Vannacutt walking around with a bloody saw.
Evelyn seemingly dies in front of the others, strapped to an electroshock therapy table. Price pulls a gun on the guests, demanding to know who killed his wife. Eddie knocks him out and they lock Price in the "Saturation Chamber", an archaic zoetrope device that Vannacutt used to treat schizophrenics. Blackburn volunteers to guard Price. When the others leave, he turns the chamber on, leaving Price to be tortured by the moving images and ghostly hallucinations. In Vannacutt's office, Sara and Eddie find a portrait of the hospital's head staff and realize that the Prices and invited party guests, with the exception of Blackburn, are descendants of the five survivors of the 1931 fire. After Pritchett mentions that the massive spiritual energy in the house manifests and travels in many ways, Sara deduces that the spirits hacked the guest list on Price's computer through the Internet.
Blackburn returns to Evelyn's body and revives her with an injection. He is revealed as Evelyn's lover. Together they have faked Evelyn's death, plotting to frame Price for the murders, hoping one of the guests will kill him in self-defense. Fearing the guests are not yet sufficiently motivated to turn on Price, Evelyn heartlessly kills Blackburn, adding another victim, then releases a delirious Price from the Saturation Chamber. Sara, Eddie, and Pritchett discover that Evelyn's body is missing and return to the chamber, where they find Blackburn's head and body separated from one another. Sara searches for Price and hears Melissa's faint cries for help. Instead Sara finds Price, covered in blood, and shoots him. Eddie and Pritchett arrive and bring Sara upstairs, after which Evelyn approaches Price to gloat. Price, protected by a bulletproof vest and posing as dead, attacks Evelyn. As they scuffle, Evelyn is thrown through a decaying door, revealing the evil entity of the house – The Darkness.
The shape-shifting entity, composed of the spirits in the house, consumes Evelyn, killing her and adding her spirit to its mass. Price then discovers Melissa's dismembered body. The Darkness turns to Price and tries to add him to its mass. He flees until he arrives at the end of a hallway with a locked door, pleading with the others to open it. As Pritchett does so, Price dives out of the way of the approaching Darkness, which grabs Pritchett and retreats downstairs, killing him. Price has a sudden realization that the attic might house the mechanisms used to operate the lockdown system and flees there, followed by Sara and Eddie. Price opens an iron gate in the attic, then sacrifices himself to give the others time to escape. Sara gets out, but The Darkness cuts a rope that closes the gate, trapping Eddie.
As The Darkness prepares to assimilate Eddie, he reveals that he is adopted and not a true descendant of the original staff. Pritchett's ghost appears and opens the iron gate just as The Darkness advances to assimilate Eddie, and Sara pulls Eddie outside before the gate slams shut again. Pritchett's ghost and The Darkness fade away as Sara and Eddie watch the sun rise. They find an envelope on a ledge, containing all five checks, made out to cash and signed by Price. They are relieved to have escaped and won the money but are stuck on the roof of the house, unsure of how to get down.
In a black-and-white post-credits scene, the spirits of the 1931 patients are seen torturing the Prices, presumably doomed to eternal damnation in the afterlife.




Cast






Production






= Development

=

House on Haunted Hill was the first film produced by American production company Dark Castle Entertainment. Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis had discussed remaking William Castle's 1959 film as early as 1997. Castle's daughter Terry Castle served as co-producer on the remake. Director William Malone was a fan of the original film, which he had seen in his childhood. Malone and producer Dick Beebe worked on the film's screenplay for a year and a half. According to Malone, he wrote approximately twenty percent of the screenplay, though he did not take a writing credit on it.
Co-producer Gilbert Adler noted that he felt the film was "totally different" from the original, but retained the spirit of the original, in terms of "how we're telling the story, and the basic tenets of the story itself. We contemporize it as much as possible." The unethical psychiatry methods and experimental procedures featured in the film were loosely based on medical experiments conducted by the Nazis. Unlike in the 1959 film, in which a supernatural element was only hinted at (and ultimately revealed to be a ruse), the reality of paranormal forces attacking the party attendees was made explicit in Beebe's screenplay.




= Casting

=
Geoffrey Rush signed on to appear as Steven Price, the theme park mogul in the film. The Price character name, as well as some of the character's overall personality and mannerisms, are references to actor Vincent Price, who portrayed the same character—named "Frederick Loren"—in the original film. Malone stated that Rush was committed to the material and took the role seriously. Elizabeth Hurley was initially considered for the role of Evelyn Price, but by February 1999, Famke Janssen was ultimately cast in the part.
Taye Diggs was subsequently cast as Eddie, the ex-professional baseball player attending the party, and agreed to appear in the film after Rush signed onto the project. Ali Larter, who had previously completed Varsity Blues (1999), was cast as Sara Wolfe, a woman who poses as her ex-boss, film executive Jennifer Jensen; the film marked Larter's third screen appearance. Saturday Night Live star Chris Kattan was cast as Watson Pritchett, the caretaker of the building. Terry Castle stated that Kattan was cast in the part for the sake of comic relief, and that the filmmakers allowed Kattan to "just [be] who he is."
For the role of Dr. Vannacutt, the deranged head doctor of the hospital, singer Marilyn Manson was at one point considered, but Jeffrey Combs was ultimately cast in the part.




= Filming

=
The film was shot in late 1998 and early 1999 in Los Angeles, California, with exteriors of the house's driveway being shot in Griffith Park near the Griffith Park Observatory. Adler commented on the unorthodox nature of the house: "Instead of being a typical sort of haunted house, this [one] is much more modern, with a touch of Deco. It's not what you'd expect to see." Larter stated in an on-set interview: "The set is dark and dirty, and everyone's been sick, and [Taye Diggs] and Chris [Kattan] keep me laughing. We really have had a good time."
The "Terror Incognita" roller coaster at Price's amusement park featured in the beginning of the film is actually The Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal Islands of Adventure theme park at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida.
The film was shot on 35 mm film stock, the negatives of which director Malone flashed in order to reduce the contrast of the picture, giving it a visual appearance similar to the film stock used in the early 20th century.




= Visual effects

=

Some reviewers noted that the surrealistic jerking, twitching effect of the ghosts featured in the film was similar to the effects in Adrian Lyne's film Jacob's Ladder (1990). The special effects in the film were designed by Gregory Nicotero and Robert Kurtzman, with additional makeup design by Dick Smith in his last film credit. One of the monster figures featured in the film during Price's underwater hallucination sequence was a creation of Smith's that was intended to be used in Ghost Story (1981) but was ultimately not featured. Malone, struck by the appearance of the figure—which consisted of an eyeless, noseless human head with an enlarged mouth—was granted permission from Smith to use it in the film.
The tentacular morphing mass of ghosts featured at the film's climax was designed by KNB Effects, and was inspired by the visuals of H.P. Lovecraft's novels, as well as resembling the Rorschach inkblots used in psychiatry. According to Malone, much of the visual elements were actually not computer-generated, and were actually made up of footage shot by the production crew, which was grafted together to form the mass.
Other practical visual effects included the use of a spinning saw blade being held in front of a camera lens to achieve a fluttering look to the hallucinatory sequences experienced by Price in the Saturation Chamber.




= Post-production

=



Deleted footage

Several key scenes were taken out of the final cut of the film. This included an exposition scene showing how Sara came to receive an invitation to the party: While working as a production assistant on a film set, Sara is fired by her boss, Jennifer Jenzen (played by Debi Mazar), the feisty vice president of a motion picture company. Two versions of the scene were shot, during which Sara hands Jennifer a bag delivered for her; inside is a music box with a jack-in-a-box-trigger which cuts the handler's finger. Jennifer throws the box in the garbage, and Sara discovers the invitation to Price's party inside of it.
Another scene removed from the film last-minute, according to director Malone, was a scene in which Sara falls through a collapsing floor when she and Baker are being chased by The Darkness. After falling two stories below, Wolfe awakens in a subterranean crematorium filled with the ashes and corpses of the hospital's dead patients. There, she is attacked by reanimated corpses who rise out of the ashes, terrorizing her and tearing off her overcoat. As a result of the scene's removal, there remains a continuity error in the final cut of the film, in which Wolfe's overcoat disappears from her body in-between scenes.
A final epilogue scene completing the Jennifer Jenzen story arc was also filmed, featuring Jennifer arriving at the house with a realtor, which she is to inherit. As she enters the front door, a bloodcurdling scream is heard, and the realtor is revealed to be Dr. Vannacutt. Director Malone said the scene ultimately was removed after the cutting of Jenzen's exposition scene, as well as for having a comical tone that did not fit with the rest of the film.
All three deleted scenes from the film were included on the 2000 Warner Bros. Home Video release of the film on DVD in the bonus features section.




Music



The soundtrack for the film was commercially released on the label Varèse Sarabande, containing selections from the original score by Don Davis. Davis composed the film score and recorded it with an orchestra in a Seattle church. In order to lend the score a gothic quality, Davis intended to implement a pipe organ, but due to budgetary reasons instead used sampled organ pieces.
Track listing

The song "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by Marilyn Manson is not on the soundtrack but plays during the scene lead up to the Asylum and end credits.




Release






= Marketing

=
In keeping with the spirit of William Castle's tradition of releasing each of his films with a marketing gimmick, Warner Bros. and Dark Castle supplied movie theatres with scratch-off tickets that would be given to moviegoers. The scratch-off ticket would give each patron a chance to win money, like the characters in the film. The cash prizes totaled $1 million, including movie rentals from Blockbuster.
Dark Castle had originally intended to release each of their films with a gimmick much like Castle had done. They had considered releasing the remake Thirteen Ghosts in 3-D with special glasses similar to the ones used by the characters in the film. These plans were scrapped and House on Haunted Hill remains the only film released with a special marketing gimmick.
The film premiered in Los Angeles on October 27, 1999, at the Mann Village Theater. Janssen, Kattan, Larter and Wilson were in attendance with director Malone, as well as producers Silver and Adler.




= Home media

=
Warner Home Video released House on Haunted Hill on VHS and a special edition DVD in April 2000. In 2006, Warner reissued it as part of a double feature DVD paired with the original 1959 film.
On October 9, 2018, Scream Factory released the film on Blu-ray for the first time in North America as a collector's edition featuring new interviews with Malone and other crew, among various other features.




Reception






= Box office

=
House on Haunted Hill was released theatrically in North America on October 29, 1999, screening at 2,710 theaters. It opened at number one at the U.S. box office that weekend, earning over $15 million in sales. Its theatrical exhibition lasted 61 weeks. By the end of tis theatrical run, the film had a domestic gross of $40,846,082 and an international gross of $24,244,459, for a total of $65,090,541 worldwide.




= Critical response

=
House on Haunted Hill received generally negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 31% rating, based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The site's consensus reads, "Unsophisticated and unoriginal film fails to produce scares." Metacritic reports a score of 28 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "House on Haunted Hill is the kind of horror movie that's not a bit scary and quite a bit gross. Yet it's also mildly, even pleasantly, entertaining, at least by the diminished standard set by this summer's The Haunting ... [it] sets up hostile relationships between the characters, which allows the audience to wonder who is doing what to whom. Finding out is not so interesting, but getting there isn't so bad." Maitland McDonough of Film Journal gave the film a similar review, saying "The proceedings are all utterly conventional, but watching them unfold is mildly diverting if you're in the right frame of mind, as many moviegoers apparently were over the Halloween weekend," also favorably comparing the film to Jan de Bont's remake of The Haunting, which was released several months prior.
Kim Newman, writing for Sight and Sound, praised the "try-anything approach of writer-director William Malone" and observed that the film "manages to respect the original's intentions far more than such recent remakes as the 1999 versions of The Mummy and The Haunting... 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."
Eric Harrison of the Los Angeles Times praised the performances in the film, particularly those of Rush, Kattan, and Larter, but felt that the screenplay's tone was inconsistent, writing: "Humans do so many horrible things to each other in House on Haunted Hill that the ghosts don’t stand a chance of keeping up, which may explain why the script makes such nitwits of the characters—if the spooks are going to make an impression, they need all the help they can get." Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B− rating, calling it "trash, but creepier than you expect." Joe Leydon of Variety gave the film a favorable review, noting its "cheap scares," but adding: "Given the irredeemable cheesiness of the original 1958 House on Haunted Hill, the makers of the remake had nowhere to go but up. So it's not exactly a stunning surprise to find the new horror opus is a slicker and scarier piece of work."
Lawrence Van Gelder's of The New York Times called the film "a sorry reincarnation" of the original, adding: "This film wastes the talents of actors like Geoffrey Rush and Peter Gallagher in hollow roles and relies heavily on its sets and special effects to do the work that should have been accomplished by its director and writer." The Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov echoed a similar sentiment, writing: "The nicest thing I can say about this remake of William Castle's 1958 shocker is that Geoffrey Rush, god bless him, sure can do a fine imitation of Vincent Price's original mustache, even better than John Waters's -- which is no mean feat."




= Accolades

=
It was nominated for Worst Remake at the 1999 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.




Sequel



In 2007, the film was followed up with a direct-to-DVD sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill, with Jeffrey Combs reprising his role as Vannacut and was released in both rated and unrated editions. The film had no involvement from William Malone and received poor reviews, mainly due to plot holes, continuity in the building design and various other features of the film, but it was praised for its state-of-the-art Blu-Ray feature in which the viewer can change the path of the story.




See also


List of ghost films




References






Sources






External links



Official website
House on Haunted Hill at IMDb
House on Haunted Hill at AllMovie
House on Haunted Hill at the TCM Movie Database
House on Haunted Hill at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films

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