House on Haunted Hill (1999 film)
| House on Haunted Hill | |
|---|---|
| File:House on haunted hill.jpg Evil loves to party. | |
| Directed by | William Malone |
| Written by | 1959 screenplay: Robb White Screenplay: Dick Beebe |
| Produced by | Gilbert Adler Joel Silver Robert Zemeckis |
| Starring | Geoffrey Rush Famke Janssen Taye Diggs Peter Gallagher Chris Kattan Ali Larter Bridgette Wilson |
| Cinematography | Rick Bota |
| Edited by | Anthony Adler |
| Distributed by | Warner Brothers |
Release dates | October 29, 1999 |
Running time | 93 min. |
| Country | United States of America |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $19 Million |
House on Haunted Hill is a 1999 Warner Brothers horror movie, directed by William Malone, written by Dick Beebe and starring Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen. Produced by Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver, it is a remake of the 1959 classic of the same name directed by William Castle, borrowing to some degree horror elements from the 1973 classic Don't Look in the Basement. This film was the first for Dark Castle Entertainment.
Made for around $20 million, the R-rated movie was mauled by the critics but grossed $15 million on its opening weekend and went on to earn over $40 million.
The film is often compared with The Haunting, another 1999 remake of a similar classic from 1963 based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House. Also worth noting, in comparison to the original, while William Castle's version leaves a degree of ambiguity as to the presence of ghosts in the building, the remake leaves no doubt whatsoever.
News recently unsurfaced that Dark Castle is planning to release a sequel of the film, entitled Return to House on Haunted Hill.
Plot
The film sets the action in an abandoned asylum, The Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, where mass-murders were undertaken in the past. The head of the facility, Doctor Richard B. Vannacutt, performed grotesque experiments and medical procedures on the patients, killing many of them in the process. The hospital was shut down when many of the so called "patients" escaped, killing the entire staff and burning the hospital. Vannacutt had rigged the building with numerous iron gates actuated by cranks and levers to serve, for the most part, as barriers to keep patients from leaving the building, should they escape. Some of these barriers are subject to huge clock-like timers that would not open for twelve hours. He released these gates keeping the inmates, employees and the fire within the building. After several unexplained deaths during reconstruction on the house, mostly the owners of the house, it was dubbed The House on Haunted Hill.
The story centers around the disintegrating marriage of Evelyn (Famke Janssen), a bitchy trophy wife who defines high maintenance and Steven Price (Geoffrey Rush), an amusement park mogul with a wicked sense of humor, both of whom would cheerfully kill the other. Evelyn fancies spectacular parties, so Steve leases the house from the owner, Watson Pritchett (Chris Kattan) descendant of the house's owners, for her Halloween birthday bash. Steven was supposed to send out the invites from the two page listing of names given him by Evelyn. The actual invitations were sent out to only four people - Jennifer Jenzen (aka Sarah Wolfe) (Ali Larter), Eddie Baker (Taye Diggs), Melissa Marr (Bridgette Wilson) and Dr. Donald Blackburn (Peter Gallagher). When the guests arrive, neither Evelyn nor Steven know who they are. Despite this, Price continues the party's theme, offering a million dollars to anyone who stays to each of the five guests if they survive until morning, with any person not making it having their money tipped into the winners' pot.
Shortly after, the security gates are tripped, sealing itself shut and locking everyone inside, forcing them to remain there until the gates reopen in the morning. Initially this is a gimmick orchestrated by Steve and Schecter (Max Perlich), a company employee who develop a series of harmless traps meant to scare the guests. But this of course isn't the case, when everyone begins to see the house come alive. What follows is the slow, and often bloody, demise of several of the guests and hosts in various ways, courtesy of the evil spirits of the house. It is discovered that the spirits in the house created the party list to include the descendants of those who were employed at the hospital when it burned.
Deaths
Melissa Marr (Bridgette Wilson) -- Mutilated (mostly off camera) and hung on display in the basement.
Schecter -- Head sliced in half (off camera).
Donald Blackburn (Peter Gallagher) -- Stabbed to death and ultimately decapitated by Evelyn.
Evelyn Price (Famke Janssen) -- Dies twice. She initially fakes her death in an electroshock therapy device, and is later revived by Dr. Blackburn. She met her actual end at the "hands" of the house when she was sucked into the shadows.
Watson Pritchett (Chris Kattan) -- Sucked into the shadows by the house.
Steven Price (Geoffrey Rush) -- Sucked into the shadows by the house.
The Shadow Of The House
The "Shadow of the House" is the evil core of the house. It is stored in a part of the basement where in the past Watson Pritchett's father tried to permanently lock it away by covering the door with bricks but the construction was never completed. The Shadow is made up by the ghosts of everyone who died by Dr. Vannacutt's hand and in the fire, including the doctor himself; and it sucks or burns it's victims dry into ash. It escapes from its prison when Stephen and Evelyn were trying to kill each other in one of the scenes. Mr. Price pushes Mrs. Price into the door, thereby breaking it and setting the darkness free. Template:Endspoiler
Survivors
In the end only "Jennifer" and Eddie remain, because "Jennifer" is actually Sara Wolfe, Jennifer's ex-secretary and Eddie was adopted. Eddie and Sarah survive (with Steve and Watson's help), having escaped the Shadow, and are last seen stranded on the house's top ledge and are saved by the coast guard (which is in a deleted scene of the movie). However, they have the envelope with the cashiers checks and split the money between them. Template:Endspoiler
Trivia
- The character of Dr. Killjoy from the Midway video game The Suffering, is based on Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt.
- The reporter interviewing Steven Price at the beginning of the film is singer Lisa Loeb. The camera operator is played by James Marsters (famous for his role as "Spike" in the television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and as "Brainiac" in Smallville).
- House on Haunted Hill marks the first film created under the Dark Castle Entertainment banner.
- A deleted scene indicates that Dr. Vannacutt utilised a sub-basement as a mass grave, filled with the bodies of his failed experiments.
- "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", by Marilyn Manson, can be heard at the beginning of the film and during the credit roll, as well as during the movie itself. The original version was performed by the Eurythmics in 1983.
- When Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt appears at the end of the film, he is heard saying "The Doctor is in." This is in fact a sound bite of Doctor Channard as a cenobite from the second installment in the Hellraiser series, Hellbound: Hellraiser II.
- The "Terror Incognita" roller coaster is actually the "Incredible Hulk Coaster" located in the Islands of Adventure at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida, USA.
- After the credit roll, the fate of the dead character's souls is shown.
- In the original House on Haunted Hill, Frederick Loren was played by Vincent Price. In the remake, actor Geoffrey Rush's character's name is Steven Price.
Goofs
- In the scene where the cast find the guns in the tiny coffins, they mention that it is not possible to tell if they are loaded because the clips are welded. Being semi-automatic pistols, simply pulling back the slide & ejecting the first round would have easily determined whether live or blank rounds had been loaded.
- In the scene where Evelyn and Steven are fighting, he has his hands around Evelyn's neck. Her hair is next to Steven's hand, then it is away from it. This changes from shot to shot.
- In the scene where Chris Kattan is sitting on the couch telling everyone that they are going to die and just before Eddie slaps the glass out of his hand, you see a back shot of Chris pouring the last of a bottle into a glass, then it cuts to the front and shows him pouring it again.
- In the scene about the Terror Incognita roller-coaster, when the rails break, they have ragged ends at the gap; after the first roller-coaster train derails, the rails move together again to close the gap and allow the second roller-coaster train to pass safely; but as you see the rails move together again, they now have neatly cut ends at the gap, not ragged ends. This could be seen as a deliberate error to mislead the audience, but an error nonetheless.
- Right after Evelyn gets electroshocked, Blackburn takes off her mouth guard and a pool of blood leaks around her lips and down the side of her cheeks. In the next shot, there is a little bit on her lips, and a lot down the side of her cheeks, and several shots later she is seen with only a little dribble down her cheeks and none on her lips.
- When Eddie and "Jennifer" are walking around the house alone, "Jennifer" is trying to tell Eddie that she's really Sara. But by the time she is explaining that her name is actually Sara and not Jennifer, Eddie has disappeared. She doesn't find him until later, but from the moment she finds him (and he is talking to her) he calls her Sara, although he never actually heard her say that. Also, after they all get back together, a few of the other people start calling her Sara as well, but none of them heard her say that that was her name.