HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): 1/2
What do you do for a living? Whatever it is, assume for a moment that instead you're a talented carpenter, who takes pride in his work. People are always complimenting you for the houses you build, and you've even won some prestigious awards.
One day, a wealthy man comes and offers you a handsome commission to construct a large mansion for him. Everything sounds promising until he shows you the blueprints. He wants you to remake one of the ugliest houses in town. Moreover, he demands that you use substandard materials and not take the time to build it properly.
So what do you do? Do you take the money, close your eyes and hold your nose? Or do you tell him that you have your reputation to uphold and refuse his lucrative job offer?
For Geoffrey Rush and his costars in HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher and Chris Kattan), the money proved more valuable than a risk that they might insult their fans and damage their careers.
William Malone's HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, wisely not screened in advance to critics, is a remake of William Castle's 1958 bad B-movie of the same name, which starred Vincent Price. (This new movie should not be confused with a terrible movie released earlier this year called THE HAUNTING. This one manages, amazingly, to be even worse.)
The setup is that 5 guests must stay overnight in a haunted house. If they do, they'll earn one million dollars each, more if some of them die.
So what new ideas does the remake have to improve upon the original? First, there's the money. It was only $10,000 back in the 50s. Second, there are lots of uses of the F-word to punch up the script. Finally, the characters employ crude sexual insults and humor to keep the audience awake. In order to create fright, the movie employs the canonical techniques of loud sounds (you're going to need ear plugs) and lots of blood.
Dick Beebe's script contains nothing but retreads. "Take my word for it, everything's fine," Steven Price (Rush) says in limp reassurance in one scene. "Is this dump really haunted?" asks one of the movie's bimbos in another.
Geoffrey Rush shamelessly overacts with a vengeance in this chillingly awful movie, which leaves us with one nagging question. Can Oscars be recalled?
HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL runs 1:36. It is rated R for violence, gore, language and nudity and would be fine for teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews