House on Haunted Hill (1999 film)
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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. The producers are 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's premise is a group of people are invited to spend a night at a 'haunted house' in exchange for money ($10,000 in 1959, $1,000,000 in 1999). Unlike the original the remake is more of a shocker, it is very reliant on plot twists and special effects - notably computer generated sequences - rather than the low key build-up of the original.
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 Institute is supposedly located on a high cliff in the Pacific Palisades region of Los Angeles, California; overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The events were overseen and conducted by the owner of the institute, the sadistic Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt. Five people are invited to attend the birthday party of the wife (Janssen) of billionaire Steven Price (Rush, the original inviter was played by Vincent Price and Price shares a name and some visual similarities with Vincent). Rather than the expected guests, five strangers arrive (Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan). Despite this, Price continues the party's theme, offering a million dollars to anyone who stays for the night.
The original doctor had considerable problems with insane patients escaping from his asylum, so he rigged the building with numerous iron gates actuated by cranks and levers to serve, for the most part, as barriers. Some of these barriers are subject to huge clocklike timers, and during their stay all seven people are captured within the building, forcing them to remain there until the gates reopen in the morning.
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 is the fact that 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.
Sequel
- On bloody-disgusting.com there are news that Dark Castle Entertainment has announced a sequel to this movie.
- Ali Larter won't be in the film , has turned it down to reprise her role when asked on an interview of .
External links
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