Thirteen Ghosts

Thir13en Ghosts
Promotional poster
Directed by	Steve Beck
Written by	Robb White Neal Marshall Stevens
Produced by	Robert Zemeckis Gilbert Adler Joel Silver
Starring	Tony Shalhoub Embeth Davidtz Matthew Lillard Shannon Elizabeth F. Murray Abraham
Distributed by	- USA - Warner Bros. - non-USA - Columbia Pictures
Release dates	October 23, 2001
Running time	91 min.
Language	English
Budget	$20,000,000 (estimated)

Thir13en Ghosts (also known simply as Thirteen Ghosts or 13 Ghosts) is a 2001 horror film directed by Steve Beck. It is a remake of the 1960 film 13 Ghosts by William Castle. It follows the remake of another one of Castle's films, House on Haunted Hill.

Plot

In the opening scene, Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham), a ghost hunter, leads a team on a mission to capture a spirit in a junkyard. Several of the men are killed during the ensuing fight, including Cyrus himself when his throat is slashed. However, the team is able to catch the ghost.

The focus shifts to the life of Cyrus' nephew Arthur (Tony Shalhoub), a mathematics teacher whose wife Jean died in a house fire. He struggles to make ends meet for his children Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and Bobby (Alec Roberts), and babysitter/nanny Maggie Bess(Rah Digga), but receives a stroke of luck when Ben Moss (J. R. Bourne), Cyrus' lawyer, pays a visit. Arthur has inherited his uncle's mansion.

The building, made almost entirely of glass, proves to be filled with priceless artifacts as well as Latin phrases inscribed on the floors and movable walls. Arthur and his family are excited to own it until Dennis Rafkin (Matthew Lillard), a neurotic psychic who used to work for Cyrus, forces his way inside. He reveals Cyrus' ghost-hunting obsession and explains that twelve angry spirits have been imprisoned in the basement; the Latin inscriptions are means to keep them penned in. Arthur initially scoffs at him, but quickly changes his mind when one of the spirits attacks Kathy. Ben, who came with them for a tour of the house, had accidentally tripped a mechanism to seal the entrance and release the ghosts one by one. He later steps back into an open doorway and is killed when it snaps shut, slicing him in half.

Arthur and Dennis, armed with special glasses that enable them to see the ghosts, attempt to rescue Kathy and Bobby, who have both mysteriously disappeared. They come across Kalina Oretzia (Embeth Davidtz), a spirit releaser who claims to have entered the house through an opening when it shifted. She saves Arthur and Kathy from a ghost and explains Cyrus' plans involving the house. It is, she says, a giant machine built for the sole purpose of opening a portal to the "Ocularis Infernum" (Eye of Hell), a demonic device that allows its user to see into the future. It requires the twelve ghosts to do so, one of whom is Jean Kriticos. However, if a thirteenth ghost is created through a sacrifice for the sake of true love, it can act as a failsafe and shut the system down. Arthur realizes that he must become that ghost by dying to save his children.

Cyrus is revealed to be alive, having faked his death in order to lure Arthur to the house, and Kalina turns out to be his secret partner and lover. He has orchestrated these events so that Arthur will become the thirteenth ghost--not to stop the machine as Kalina claimed, but to trigger it. As Cyrus kills Kalina by crushing her between two walls, Dennis is killed by the ghosts, buying Arthur enough time to reach his children. They have been placed at the center of a set of whirling, razor-sharp rings; just as Arthur is ready to jump toward them, Maggie destroys part of the machine's workings. All the ghosts except Jean turn against Cyrus and throw him into the rings, chopping him to pieces, and Arthur makes a perfectly timed leap over the blades to save Kathy and Bobby.

The house's glass walls shatter, releasing the spirits from captivity; Jean lingers briefly to say goodbye to the family, then departs with the others. A fed-up Maggie announces her emphatic resignation in the movie's final line: "This is it for me. I'm on the first fuckin' plane back to Newark. I'm sorry, family, Bobby, Kathy, uncle, ghosts. I am sick of this nanny shit. I've had it. This was not in the job description. I QUIT!"

The ghosts

The twelve ghosts which make up the Black Zodiac all have their own unique back story. Although these stories were not described in the film, on the DVD the production and make-up teams explain their guidelines. All the ghosts were contained in glass prisons, and were caught with the aid of the psychic Rafkin, who could locate them on behalf of Cyrus.

1. The First Born Son (played by Michael Speidel)

The First Born Son is the ghost of Billy Michaels, a boy who was a fan of cowboy films. One day, a neighbor found a real steel arrow in his parents' closet. He challenged Billy to a duel, with Billy using a toy gun. However, his plaything was no match for the arrow, which the neighbor used to kill Billy by shooting it through the back of his head. In death, Billy is in his cowboy suit with an arrow impaled in his head. Billy is holding an axe.

2. The Torso (played by Daniel Wesley)

The Torso is the ghost of a gambler called Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. Losing everything in a boxing match to Larry "The Finger" Vatello, he tried to welch on his bet and escape. The mob and Larry, to whom he owed money, caught up with Gambino and cut him into several pieces, wrapping them in cellophane and dumping the corpse into the ocean. His ghost is just his torso, trying to walk around on its hands, while his head lies nearby screaming within the cellophane.

3. The Bound Woman (played by Laura Mennel)

The Bound Woman was a cheerleader named Susan LeGrow, who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and had a penchant for seducing men and tossing them away, which left a long trail of broken hearts. After cheating on her boyfriend preceding a high school prom, she was strangled by him, and later found buried on the football field at the 50 yard line. T boy she cheated on her boyfriend with was also murdered. The boyfriend was convicted and sentenced to death; before his execution, he was quoted as saying, "The bitch broke my heart, so I broke her neck." Her ghost is in her prom dress, hanging suspended by the strangling implements with her arms tied behind her back.

4. The Withered Lover (played by Kathryn Anderson)

The Withered Lover is Jean Kriticos, Arthur's wife. She tried to save her children in the house fire that changed her family's lives, and though successful, she was burned severely. She was hospitalized and ultimately died from her wounds. Her ghost is still in a hospital gown, carting an IV and showing severe burns on her face. Unlike the other ghosts, she is not a vengeful spirit, electing to help her family rather than show malevolence.

5. The Torn Prince (played by Craig Olejnik)

The Torn Prince is the ghost of Royce Clayton, who was a gifted baseball star, albeit with attitude issues and a superiority complex. He challenged a greaser to a drag race and was killed when he lost control and crashed his car. His body was buried in a plot of earth that overlooked the baseball diamond. His ghost carries a baseball bat, and half of his body is torn up by glass wounds.

6. The Angry Princess (played by Shawna Loyer)

The Angry Princess is Dana Newman, who despite being naturally beautiful, constantly believed she was ugly. This mentality was further fueled by a string of abusive boyfriends. Her money was constantly spent at a cosmetic surgery clinic, accepting numerous cosmetic surgeries on herself for various ailments and malformations that only she could see. Eventually she got a job working for a plastic surgeon, getting paid in treatments rather than cash. One night when everyone had left the surgery, sshe tried to fix an unseen blemish by performing plastic surgery on herself. She failed horribly, blinding herself in one eye aand permanently mutilating herself beyond saving. In despair, she crawled into a bath and sliced herself all over her body with a butcher knife until she bled to death. When she was found, they said that she was as beautiful in death as she was in life. Her ghost is naked, still carrying the butcher knife she killed herself with and showing all the wounds.

In the scene when she appears in the bathroom, the phrase "I'm sorry" is visible on the floor in blood; subtitles also reveal that the blurred, hissing speech that announces her arrival is her whispering "I'm sorry." This was written on her suicide note.

7. The Pilgrimess (played by Xantha Radley)

The Pilgrimess is the ghost of Isabella Smith, an English woman who traveled across the Atlantic and settled in New England. She was an outsider to the town she moved into, and this isolated her from the other townsfolk. She was found guilty of witchcraft after livestock began to die mysteriously, and when she emerged from a burned down barn completely unharmed, and sentenced to the stocks (pillory) with no food or drink until she died. As a ghost, she is still locked into her stocks.

8. & 9. The Great Child and The Dire Mother (played by C. Ernst Harth and Laurie Soper)

The Dire Mother is the ghost of Margaret Shelburne, who was an attraction in a carnival due to her being only three feet tall. She was raped by the "Tall Man," another carnival freak, and bore a child, Harold, who eventually weighed over 300 pounds (136 kg).

Harold was spoiled by his mother, keeping his childlike brain as he grew older. She raised him to be her protector and to exact revenge on the other members of the carnival who kidnapped her as a joke. When he caught up with the culprits he found that his mother had accidentally suffocated to death in the bag that she was kept in. Harold, in a rage, took an axe and killed all the circus freaks who murdered her, placing their corpses on display at the circus. Later, when the owner of the carnival found out what Harold had done he ordered a mob of people to tear Harold apart. Their ghosts are always together, and Harold still wields the axe.

An alternate version of the story is told in the DVD commentary. It was said that his death was caused by him choking on some food. Upon his death he fell on his mother and she couldn't lift him off of her, and that's what caused her suffocation. This would explain why he has food all over his bib in ghost form, but it would not give credence to his wielding of an axe. Then again, there's no reason for a boy in a cowboy outfit to wield an axe either so it may simply be a manifestation of their rage.

10. The Hammer (played by Herbert Duncanson)

The Hammer is the ghost of a blacksmith, George Markley, who lived in a small town in the 1890s. He was threatened to be driven out of town after wrongfully being accused of stealing by a man named Nathan. Knowing he was innocent, he refused to leave and stayed in town. One day, George's wife and kids were on their way home from the market when Nathan and some of his friends attacked and brutally murdered them. Enraged, George tracked down the people responsible for killing his wife and kids and hammered them to death. The other townsfolk captured him, and they drove railroad spikes into his body until he died. They also cut off his hand, replacing it with the head of his sledgehammer, which remains with his ghost and makes him very dangerous.

11. The Jackal (played by Shayne Wyler)

The Jackal is Ryan Kuhn, a self-admitted mental patient and son of a prostitute during the early 20th century with a penchant for attacking women. The doctors at the hospital did little to treat his mental condition and simply locked him in a padded room. After years of imprisonment, he went completely insane and scratched at the walls so violently that his fingernails were ripped completely off. The doctors permanently put him in a straitjacket, and when he chewed through it and escaped, the doctors had a metal cage locked around his head. After years of this existence, he grew deformed and reviled human contact. He was the only victim of a fire that broke out in the asylum; he chose to stay behind and meet, what he believed, to be his deserved fate. As a ghost, his arms are free from his jacket, and there is a hole chewed in the front of his cage, showing that he may have escaped his bindings again sometime before the fire started.

12. The Juggernaut (played by John DeSantis)

The Juggernaut was a serial killer named Horace "Breaker" Mahoney. Standing seven feet tall, which led to his ostracization as a child, he towed broken-down motorists to his junkyard where he murdered them, tearing them apart with his bare hands and feeding them to his dogs. Since close combat was impossible, the police instead struck the junkyard in force and brought him down in a hail of bullets. When he finally went down, they shot an extra clip into him, just to be safe. His ghost still shows bullet holes all over his clothing, and the wound that finished him. This is the ghost that Cyrus and his team capture in the opening scene.

Cast

For the cast of the individual ghosts, see above

• Tony Shalhoub — Arthur Kriticos
• Embeth Davidtz — Kalina Oretzia
• Matthew Lillard — Dennis Rafkin
• Shannon Elizabeth — Kathy Kriticos
• Alec Roberts — Robert 'Bobby' Kriticos
• J. R. Bourne — Benjamin Moss
• Rah Digga — Maggie Bess
• F. Murray Abraham — Cyrus Kriticos
• Matthew Harrison — Damon
• Jacob Rupp — Cyrus' Assistant

External links

• Official site
• Thir13en Ghosts at IMDb
• Thir13en Ghosts at Rotten Tomatoes
• Thir13en Ghosts at Box Office Mojo
• November 4, 2000 revised draft script at The Daily Script