Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007)

Film Title: Return to House on Haunted Hill

Released: October 16, 2007

Directed by: Víctor García

Written by: William Massa based on characters created by Robb White

Starring: Amanda Righetti, Cerina Vincent, Erik Palladino, Tom Riley, Steven Pacey & Jeffrey Combs

Plot: The sister of a survivor from House on Haunted Hill is dragged to the eponymous house by a ruthless smuggler searching for a priceless artifact.

IMDb: 4.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 20/100

My Score: 2/5

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Direct-to-DVD sequel to William Malone's 1999 House on Haunted Hill, itself an expanded remake of William Castle's 1959 film of the same name, Return to House on Haunted Hill changes things up a bit from both with varying results. Amanda Righetti, a workaholic magazine editor, is the sister of Ali Larter (who does not appear in this film), who was one of only two survivor's of Malone's film. When she ends up dead of an apparent suicide, a grieving Righetti tries to find out why with the help her friend/love interest, photographer Tom Riley. While investigating, they encounter Steven Pacey, a professor searching for the Baphomet Idol, a priceless artifact connected to Jeffery Combs, a mad scientist who ran the insane asylum in the eponymous house in the 1920's, committing unspeakable acts upon the helpless inmates during his tenure. Righetti and Riley are kidnapped by Erik Palladino, a violent art dealer and former student of Pacey, who reveals that he killed Larter when she would not help him locate the idol in the asylum. Cerina Vincent lures Pacey to the asylum with her feminine wiles but is really Palladino's lover and co-conspirator. They all meet in the house but the tormented spirits start killing them off one by one. The acting isn't horrible, the effects decent but the story is really where it falls apart for me. The addition of the idol as the source of all evil in the house is pretty lame, in my opinion. Why Combs can't be evil because some people are just evil is beyond me. Human depravity is much scarier and compelling to me than "the evil thing made me do it." One thing I did like was that when the characters are knocked off by the different ghosts, there are little flashback moments of showing how that spirit died and why they're so pissed off, adding back story and history to the mythology of the franchise. The ending, however, is probably the worst part of the whole affair. Unable to destroy the idol with a handgun, Righetti instead throws it down a sewer drain, where it ends up found on a beach by a young couple in the post-credits scene. Really? Co-starring Andrew Lee Potts and Charles Venn, the DVD contains Navigational Cinema technology which allows the viewer to control different aspects of the plot to create up to 90 different versions of the film. Most of the additional 60 minutes of footage add little to the story but do offer more nudity and gore for those so inclined. The movie won a Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing: Direct to Video.

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

Film Title: House on Haunted Hill

Released: October 29, 1999

Directed by: William Malone

Written by: Dick Beebe based on a story by Robb White

Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan, Ali Larter, & Bridgette Wilson

Plot: An eccentric tycoon offers $1,000,000 each to five strangers if they stay in a haunted house overnight and survive to tell the tale.

IMDb: 5.6/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 27/100

My Score: 2.5/5

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

House on Haunted Hill is an expanded remake of the 1959 William Castle classic of the same name. It was the first film from Dark Castle Entertainment, a production company started by Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis and Gilbert Adler, with the intention to remake Castle's films for a new generation. Geoffrey Rush is an amusement park tycoon who throws a birthday party for his antagonistic wife Famke Janssen in a haunted house that used to be an insane asylum. Each of the five guests attending is offered $1,000,000 each if they can stay alive until morning. Needless to say, very few actually do. While the film pales when compared to the original, it succeeds in a number of places on its own merits. For instance, the opening scene with the fake elevator crash is a nice little freak out moment. The effects are high quality, too, but one would expect nothing less from KNB. The performances throughout are decent, with Rush and Janssen in constant competition to see who can chew up more scenery, but the standout performance for me was Chris Kattan as the overly nervous owner of the house. On the downside, the photography often becomes jarring and shaky with sweeping, tilting camera moves. I understand that this is supposed to correlate with the psychological state of the actors in the horrific scenes in which it occurs but its comes off as kitschy and is distracting. The major fail for me, though, was how the film takes the supernatural route. The first film worked so well because everything that happened was staged in order to cause panic among the guests for nefarious means. This version, however, retains most of the plot elements from the original, including the adulterous wife and her secret lover scheming to kill her husband, but in the end there is a darkness, an evil that actually exists and succeeds in killing just about everyone. This one deviation takes away the main element of what made the original so good. Musician Lisa Loeb, James Marsters and one of my favorite characters actors, Jeffery Combs, co-star. Peter Graves also briefly appears as himself hosting a television series called "Terrifying But True!!" At the 2000 Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, Taye Diggs won for Best Supporting Actor - Horror and Janssen was nominated for Best Supporting Actress - Horror.

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Film Title: House on Haunted Hill

Released: February 17, 1959

Directed by: William Castle

Written by: Robb White

Starring: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, & Elisha Cook, Jr.

Plot: Five people are offered $10,000 each to stay overnight in a haunted house with an eccentric millionaire and his wife.

IMDb: 6.9/10

Rotten Tomatoes: 95/100

My Score: 4/5

There's no denying that House on Haunted Hill is a classic of the horror genre, and for good reason. Vincent Price is of course one of the patriarchs of classic horror and I have a soft spot for Carol Ohmart because she was in the wonderfully demented Spider Baby. The story set up is simple and straightforward but the plot twists are what elevate this one from your run of the mill ghost story. Recommended viewing. Director William Castle had a knack for devising gimmicks to promote his films, usually to great success. For House on Haunted Hill, he used "Emergo," an intricate pulley system installed in select theaters that allowed a plastic skeleton to be flown over audience at the right time during the film. The success of this film piqued the interest of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, who he started devising his own low-budget horror film based on a novel written by Robert Bloch called Psycho. House on Haunted Hill was remade in 1999, with a sequel appearing in 2007. Watch a trailer for the film below or the entire film here.