HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
By: Steve BiodrowskiDate: Tuesday, April 18, 2000
It's hard to imagine what Dark Castle productions found so intriguing about remaking William Castle's campy mini-classic HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. Castle, the P.T. Barnum of filmmaking, crafted an entertaining film the first time around, but it's major strength lies in the presence of Vincent Price, who was a certified expert at standing outside of his films, tongue firmly in cheek, slyly inviting the audience to chuckle along with him at the melodramatic proceedings. In short, the original is best viewed as a vehicle for its star performer; without him, what's left?
Surprisingly, the remake, written by Dick Beebe and directed by William Malone, very nearly manages to stand on its own. The story retains some of the strengths of the original, excises a few of the gaffs, and adds some new stuff to make the film more acceptable for today's audiences. Besides Price, the original film's main strength lay in the deadly cat-and-mouse game played between him and Carol Ohmart; this element remains intact, thanks in large part to the performances of Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen.
The original story, on the other hand, featured some questionable plot twists; the worst example is that the scheming wife and her lover want to kill her husband, throw his body in a vat of acid in the basement, and collect the inheritance. Wait a minute! If his body's dissolved in acid, how do they expect to prove he's dead? Or were they perhaps content to wait for him to be declared legally dead in seven year? Fortunately, this little story point has been removed from the remake.
Finally, the original film was ultimately not a haunted house movie: all the ghostly events were explained away as machinations to disguise a murder. The remake retains the murderous plotting but adds on real supernatural events, and the results are quite effective. Additionally, unlike the original, we are given a little hint as to how the characters could fake the ghostly apparitions: Rush's character (named 'Price') makes a living designing amusement park rides that feature elaborate illusions. This combination works on a plot level because, as things start to go bump in the night, the characters can believably dismiss them--at least, at first--and even the audience isn't always sure what is real and what is contrived.
On the other hand, what doesn't work so well this time out is the way the story has been expanded. Instead of simply starting with the haunted house party, we are treated to three preliminary sequences meant to set up the plot, including a prologue set decades ago that shows the house as an asylum, overrun by inmates revolting against their sadistic treatment by Dr. Vannicut (Jeffrey Combs, mostly wasted in a wordless cameo). Mostly, this scene provides a little violence and bloodshed for the opening real (don't want those teen viewers getting antsy waiting for the good stuff).
Also, the script provides its own, original illogical elements. We're supposed to believe that the haunted house itself changed the guest list, inviting descendants of the survivors of the opening massacre. Rather fortuitously, the house invites exactly the number of guests that Mr. Price was expecting for his wife's birthday party (we know this beyond doubt, because he has five $1-million checks for those brave enough to endure the night). But no, wait. It later turns out that the house didn't invite one of the guests; he's the wife's accomplice in her plot to murder her husband. But then, the wife was expecting not five guests but dozens. Did she really expect to get away with murder with so many potential witnesses on the scene? With convoluted plot twists like this, eventually viewers have to give up trying to keep track of who is outwitting whom. You just sink back into the comfortable feeling of knowing that the filmmakers will throw whatever surprise they like at you, with little consideration for justifying it in the story.
Eventually, the film deteriorates into another pointless effects show that literally seems to wipe away the story: the murderous husband-and-wife couple actually forget their homicidal hatred for each other when confronted by CGI manifestation of the house's evil. (Perhaps the film is suggesting that petty, human evil is outweighed by evil in a supernatural, spiritual sense? Yeah, right.) Then the final reel becomes pretty much a bunch of shots of people running away from the scary special effects, which claim the lives of everyone except the cute young leads who serve as audience identification figures. Curiously, even the self-interested Price dies pushing someone out of the way of certain death, but it's not a dramatic redemption for the character; it's just one of the cornball, last-minute switcheroos (rather like Alec Guinness in BRIDE ON THE RIVER KWAI, except that one receives critical respect, for some reason).
Nevertheless, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is not nearly as drowned in a sea of special effects as last year's other old, dark house remake, THE HAUNTING. In fact, as remakes go, HAUNTED HILL must be considered the superior of the two. Perhaps this is because the source material is less revered, allowing for greater tampering without damaging a 'sacred' text. The production values (art direction, cinematography) combine to create an effective atmosphere, and the cast makes it all fun. A particular stand-out is Chris Kattan, whose character combines attributes of two stock figures in the genre: the wimp and the comic relief. His nervous doom-saying (he's the only one who knows from the beginning that the house is haunted) goes a long way toward capturing the humorous approach of the original, although in a completely different, more obvious way. So, although it is certainly flawed in significant ways, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is a decent time for undemanding horror fans. If you didn't catch it in theatres, it should be worth the price of a rental.
