HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
A Warner Bros. release

review by Joe Mauceri
 

"Has anyone seen my ego? Its about this big."

Premise: A flashy and oily amusement park owner plans the "perfect" party for his wife in a supposedly haunted insane asylum. As the couple play a deadly game of cat-&-mouse, the evil spirits stack the deck and bide their time to seek revenge.

Review: Bill Malone pulls out all the stops to deliver and genuinely scary movie. The screenplay is based on the classic William Castle gimmick-o-rama, which starred the legendary Vincent Price. Dick Beebe's screenplay relies on a structure similar to an Agatha Christie novel to create tension and suspense. He throws in a maguffen, or two, to keep the audience off balance. The filmmakers keep the timing tight, and when flip reality on its head with the impact of a Freight Train.

The filmmakers have done their homework when it comes to the visual elements. HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL offers compelling images borrowed from films like "Hellraiser," "Jacob's Ladder," "The Brothers Quay," to the music videos of "Nine Inch Nails." The guys from KNB EFX Group get to strut their stuff and deliver an impressive array of work. The early work on the released spirits works, but the geometrical designs - which looks like an ink blot test - is slightly anticlimactic. It needed to keep to the shadows, or do a bit more. I have a feeling that it probably would have had the filmmakers had more time to work on it.

Geoffrey Rush delivers a brilliant performance, blending Vincent Price and James Woods. Famke Janssen is sexy and wicked. Jeffrey Combs doesn't get nearly enough screen time, but there is a payoff for those who choose to sit through the credits. A nice surprise is Chris Kattan, from Saturday Night Live and "Night at the Roxbury." He plays a nervous character that offers comic relief.

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is the debut film from Dark Castle Entertainment, founded by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis. Their philosophy is to produce high quality, low budget, genre entertainment. Malone, Silver and Zemeckis first met on the critically acclaimed HBO series "Tales From the Crypt." The only problem with a small budget is the lack of sets. For such a large location, the cast is confined to a limited number of locations. However, the filmmakers fully exploit all the resources at their disposal to put the best haunted house of the 1999 season up on the screen. HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is the perfect Halloween frightfest

OFFICIAL WEB SITE:
www.houseonhauntedhill.com

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