Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan Directed By: William Malone Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Warner Home Video Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Region Code: 1 Release Date: April 18, 2000 Running Time: 93 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 1999
Description: When an eccentric millionaire offer a group of opposites $1,000,000 to spend the night in a so called "Haunted House" with a murderous past, they figure it is a quick way to get quick money and leave. All of them are sure it is some made up story just to mess with their heads a little and test their courage. But, once they stay in the house they start to think about the mistake they made in coming there when mysterious things start to happen.
Amazon.com: House on Haunted Hill is one of the new breed of waste-no-time thrill machines, like Deep Blue Sea, and a particularly effective example at that. The plot is pure contrivance: For a party stunt, a wealthy amusement-park manufacturer (Geoffrey Rush) offers five people a million dollars if they spend the night in a former insane asylum where the patients murdered the sadistic staff. But it turns out the five people who arrive aren't the five he invited--did his wife (Famke Janssen), who hates him, make the switch? From there events unfold with a smart combination of human and supernatural machinations; spooky jolts are dispensed at regular, but not entirely predictable, intervals. The visual effects owe a considerable debt to Jacob's Ladder, a much more ambitious movie; House on Haunted Hill just wants to get under your skin, and succeeds more than you'd expect. Rush is his entertainingly hammy self; Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, and Bridgette Wilson are attractive and reasonably straight-faced about it all; and Chris Kattan is genuinely funny as the house's neurotic owner. Some elements of the plot seem to have been lost in the editing process, but it hardly matters. More bothersome is that the scares go flat when computer effects take over at the end--the digital images just aren't as creepy as the more suggestive stuff that came before. But that's just the very end; most of the movie has a lot of momentum. Watch until the end of the credits for a final bit of eeriness. --Bret Fetzer
Creepy factor This has got to be one of the most visually dynamic and scary films I've ever watched. Geoffrey Rush is superb! Every eye twitching minute is worth watching.
The Trouble with Asylums Recent horror flicks don't seem to live up to the older, classic horror films. This one, though, does bring some more hope to the genre. This isn't try to be scary: it's already scary. It's a good old-fashioned horror flick, which is a remake of the 1959 Vincent Price classic original. It contains a plot that's pretty much ridiculous, but it has scares that sometimes brings Captain Howdy out of the picture. There's a great number of disturbing and gory images, and the dark cinematography helps with creating the nightmarish environment in an abandoned asylum. Some of the characters are quite annoying (hence the four stars instead of five), but kudos to Geoffrey Rush for stealing the show. The entire film overall does its job done, and it's probably one of the few modern horror films that really scares.
Awesome - just don't watch the ending This is one of my favs, for sure. Cool concept, fun cast, good sets, etc. Just stop the movie short of the ending, its absurd. The movie is very enjoyable without the ending, and you'll lose nothing (save for some laughs) by skipping it.
Interesting slasher movie I've looked at other reviews for this movie and most of them seem to have been rated unhelpfull by readers so this is my review of House On Haunted Hill - I hope it helps.
An eccenric millionnaire and his wife invite six people (one of them is Ali Larter who was in The Hills Have Eyes (2005) and played Clear Rivers in Final Destinations' 1 and 2) to stay in their "haunted" mansion for one night. He tells them that if they manage to stay and survive the whole night he will share one million dollars between whoever remains. He gives them each a gun "to protect themselves".
They all agree to stay and shortly the charactors start to get killed off one-by-one. Some people become suspicious and try to leave but there is a malfunction from within the house and they are sealed inside.
Lots of suspence and stalk-and-slash horror from the director of Th13teen Ghosts and Ghost Ship. If you liked either of those movies then you are guaranteed to like this as it is very similar in theme and has the same type of suspence and death scenes.
Good, slasher, ghost flick which is a lot better than most remakes and modern horror movies. This movie is definately worth a watch and I would recomed it to all fans of the horror/thriller genre.
House on Haunted Hill I must confess - I purchased this movie for two reasons. The first was that I am quite a fan of the original version; the second, I heard Jeffrey Combs was in this movie, and, well, I'll buy just about any movie with him in it. Unfortunately, Mr Combs has about one line in the whole film, and for the rest of the time we have to put up with a bunch of mildly-to-moderately obnoxious people (I don't think any of them will be winning any oscars in a hurry, either) running around the house in throws of panic. Special mention should go, however, to Geoffrey Rush, who delivers a fine preformance as Steven Price, and gives us a notable nod to Vincent Price of the original 'House on Haunted Hill'. This isn't by any means the worst movie I've seen, but it would certainly have benefited from: 1) giving Jeffrey Combs more screen-time (honestly, that man could save any movie, in my opinion), and 2) developing the other characters sufficiently enough so that the audience actually cares about what happens to them. But, of course, this IS a horror movie. Still, the special effects are very good, and, in its own way, 'House on Haunted Hill' can be quite enjoyable to watch. I recommend the original version as well; it has its own charm, from back in the days of yore, before the horror genre got quite so cliched.
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