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William Castle was a pedestrian director who failed to invest the original with any atmosphere. Geoffrey Rush (l) introduces the contestants (l to r) Famke Janssen, Ali Larter, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher This allows William Malone to adeptly play a haunted house carnival ride game dallying between whether what is going on is a real haunting, faked as part of the birthday party or a murder mystery plot. Here the new script manages to retain several of the twists of the original while also adding a few of its own. Perhaps the remake’s biggest departure over the original is that it is no longer a haunted house thriller wherein the supernatural was revealed to be of mundane origin at the end. He and Famke Janssen have a great deal of fun tearing up the scenery and sneering taunts at one another.
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Moreover, Geoffrey Rush’s character is clearly modelled on Vincent Price in the original in everything from acting to his permed hair, pencil mustache and cravat – the character is even named Price – while his role as a carnival showman seems to be modelled in no small part on William Castle himself. (One did miss the skeleton emerging out of the pool of acid). The remake adheres to the general points of the original reasonably faithfully – such as the handguns given out on coffins and the bath of blood. It is a work that is both respectful of the original, while it also employs the arsenal of top-drawer CGI effects judiciously but not to the point that they overload the show and uses them to strengthen rather than allows them to become the focal point. Geoffrey Rush as Steven Price with look clearly modeled on Vincent PriceĪctually, House on Haunted Hill is a model in its modesty of what all remakes should aspire to be. With House on Haunted Hill, William Malone finally obtained his chance at the big time and the opportunity to show what he could do with a sizeable budget and some of the top-drawer effects houses in Hollywood.
House on haunted hill skeleton series#
Malone did contribute the script to the thoroughly awful Universal Soldier: The Return (1999), which came out at the same time as House on Haunted Hill – as well as paid the bills through the years by directing episodes of various genre anthology series like Tales from the Crypt (1989-96) and Perversions of Science (1997). The remake comes from William Malone, a director who has worked down the lower end of the horror spectrum for a number of years with B-budget efforts like Scared to Death (1980) and Titan Find (1984). It was enjoyable but never a particularly great film. The original House on Haunted Hill was a throwaway B-movie that was never intended to be screened beyond the drive-in double bill. He specialised in tricks like wiring up theatres to deliver electric shocks – The Tingler (1959) insurance policies against audiences dying of fright – Macabre (1958) and, in his version of House on Haunted Hill, a skeleton that was winched across the theatre. William Castle was more of a showman than he ever was a director. The original House on Haunted Hill was made by the infamous William Castle. Contrarily, House on Haunted Hill emerges as a film that one goes into with lower expectations and one that emerges as a whole lot more enjoyable and unpretentious than The Haunting.
House on haunted hill skeleton movie#
This remake of House on Haunted Hill (1959) was clearly made in anticipation of The Haunting‘s presupposed success – you can see the thinking that can allow the remake of one haunted house movie to tail-end on the remake of another. The irony to be found here is that this trend was started off by the announcement of the Haunting remake – but where instead The Haunting proved to be the biggest flop of them all, it was sleepers like The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense that ended up capturing everybody’s attention. First up was the remake of The Haunting (1999) and this was followed variously by the amazing successes of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Sixth Sense (1999), as well as the likes of Stigmata (1999), Stir of Echoes (1999) and Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (1999). Without a doubt, 1999 was a year marked by a major return of supernatural horror.