Editorial Reviews

After months of anticipation, "House on Haunted Hill" sneaked into town yesterday like a movie with something to hide. No sneak previews, no screenings for critics, nothing but the picture, showing up in theaters all over the Bay Area.

It's an adaptation of the William Castle film of the same name, a B-movie from 1958 that was originally exhibited with skeletons dropping down from the ceilings of theaters. In the Castle film, a group of people were gathered together in a haunted house, with the agreement that anyone who lasted the night could have $10,000.

The new version uses that same premise, but raises the prize to a million. Chalk up the increase to a few factors: Inflation. A booming economy. And the naive faith that making something 100 times bigger automatically makes it better.

"House on Haunted Hill" was produced by Robert Zemeckis (director of "Forrest Gump") and directed by William Malone, the auteur responsible for "Scared to Death" and "Creature," two films I unaccountably missed. On the basis of the new picture, Malone is one those horror directors who doesn't try to scare the audience by building a mood, but by threatening, at any given moment, to show something really disgusting.

So in the opening sequence, a flashback to 1931 that tells how the house got haunted in the first place, we are treated to the sight of a doctor operating on a man's stomach without anesthetic. Minutes later, another man is stabbed to death with a pencil through the neck, all the way through and out the other side.

Then there is the fellow with his face chewed off -- but I'm getting ahead of myself. The point is, "House on Haunted Hill" is the kind of horror movie that's not a bit scary and quite a bit gross. Yet it's also mildly, even pleasantly, entertaining, at least by the diminished standard set by this summer's "The Haunting."

It's better than "The Haunting" probably because its budget was smaller. In "The Haunting" everything was invested in the house, which was an impressive piece of set creation, and the special effects, which swamped the movie. "The House on Haunted Hill" at least has some lively characters.

Geoffrey Rush plays an amusement park owner who specializes in providing perverse thrills. An early scene, in which he shows a TV reporter his latest roller coaster, is the most effective in the movie. The reporter, incidentally, is played by pop singer Lisa Loeb.

Rush is a jovial, smirking sadist married to a woman only a masochist could love. Famke Janssen is the wife, a Linda Fiorentino- style femme fatale who decides to have her birthday in a haunted facility where an evil doctor and his mental patients died in a fire in 1931. She's a gal who knows how to have fun.

The two invite a doctor (Peter Gallagher), a former baseball player (Taye Diggs), a former game- show hostess (Bridgette Wilson) and a production assistant (Ali Larter). Larter and Wilson look alike, and the movie deals with that problem efficiently.

"House on Haunted Hill" sets up hostile relationships between the characters, which allows the audience to wonder who is doing what to whom. Finding out is not so interesting, but getting there isn't so bad.

Plot Summary

• Tagline: Six strangers have the chance to make $1,000,000 EACH. All they have to do is make it through the night alive.
• Plot Outline: A millionaire offers a group of diverse people $1,000,000 to spend the night in a haunted house with a horrifying past.
• Plot Synopsis: 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.

Product Details

• Actors: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris Kattan
• Directors: William Malone
• Format: Anamorphic, Dolby Digital, Closed-Captioned, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Disc Origin: Region 1 (USA) Original
• Region: All
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1 (1 x DVD9)
• Rating: R
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: April 18, 2000
• Run Time: 95 minutes