Genre 
Index

Home

The wonderful thing about diminished expectations is that when they are exceded, even by a film as dumb at heart as this remake of William Castle's The House on Haunted Hill, the movie always seems to be so much better than it is. Of course, the original was nothing to write home about. This particular remake doesn't have the kind of pedigree that the remakes of Psycho and The Haunting disgraced, and does more honor to its original than either of those movies, in part because the producer of this movie is one Terry Castle, William Castle's daughter, for "Dark Castle Entertainment." Would that all showbiz offspring had such respect and love for their parents.

The core of Castle's movie remains--most of the key plot points are maintained and Geoffrey Rush bears an eerie resemblance to Vincent Price throughout (sans Price's menacing borderline effeminate speaking voice). The film even has a gimmick--a lame contest, to be sure, but a William Castle-style gimmick none the less. It warms the heart to see it. The filmmakers have improvised a bit on this core, though, by making the house into a REAL haunted house (actually a haunted insane asylum) and by giving it an interesting back story (the evil head of the asylum tortured and experimented on patients in the thirties before the patients broke free and massacred everyone). The back story provides some strong, nasty imagery. Certainly the central conflict between Rush and shrewish wife Famke Janssen is more interesting than the relationships in most tongue-in-cheek, post-Nightmare on Elm St. horror movies, although it pushes the film more into the realm of Roger Corman-style horror than William Castle-style horror. As I said, it's a fun movie that certainly tickles the adolescent horror movie geek inside of me...but, since I am an adult now, with fully functioning aesthetic sensibility, I have to say that it is a grave disappointment to see it all collapse under its own weight at the end amid a plethora of cgi effects (better effects than in The Haunting , true, but still....) and a deus ex machina resolution that smacks of cheating. But, really, I shouldn't complain. Diminished expectations are a wonderful thing....