House on Haunted Hill is a 1999 American supernatural horror film directed by William Malone and starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan. The plot follows a group of strangers who are invited to a party at an abandoned psychiatric hospital, where they are offered $1 million each by an amusement park mogul if they are able to survive the night. Produced by Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver, it is a remake of the 1959 film of the same title directed by William Castle. The film marked the producing debut of Dark Castle Entertainment, a production company that went on to produce numerous other horror films, including additional remakes.
Screenwriter Dick Beebe adapted the film's script from Robb White's 1959 original, updating elements of the story and introducing a significant supernatural component which was absent from the original film. Filming took place in Los Angeles in early 1999, with famed make-up artists Gregory Nicotero and Dick Smith providing the film's special effects.
House on Haunted Hill was released on Halloween weekend in 1999. In the tradition of William Castle's theater gimmicks, Warner Bros. supplied promotional scratchcards to cinemas showing the film, offering ticket buyers a chance to win a money prize, similar to the movie's characters. The film was a commercial success, opening at number one at the U.S. box office, and grossing $65 million worldwide. It received largely negative reviews from critics, with some deriding its use of special effects and gore, though it did receive some praise for its performances and horror elements.
In 2007, the film was followed by a direct-to-DVD sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill, which was released in both rated and unrated editions.
Plot In 1931 Los Angeles, the staff of the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane (headed by the sadistic Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt; a psychiatrist conducting cruel and torturous medical experiments) are under attack during a revolt by the patients. A fire erupts, killing Vannacutt, the inmates, and all but five of the staff.
In 1999, Evelyn Stockard-Price is in a disintegrating marriage with Stephen Price, an amusement park mogul known for his elaborate pranks. At Evelyn's insistence, Price stages her birthday party at the abandoned hospital, which has been partly converted into a residence. Five guests arrive: baseball player Eddie Baker; former television personality Melissa Marr; physician Donald Blackburn; Sara Wolfe, a production assistant impersonating her former boss, Jennifer; and Pritchett, the building's owner. The guests are not the ones Price invited and neither of the Prices know who they are. Despite this, Price continues the party's advertised theme, offering $1 million to each guest who remains in the house until morning; those who flee or perish forfeit their $1 million to the others.
The building's security system is tripped, locking everyone inside – a stunt which Price and Evelyn blame on each other. Sara, Eddie, and Pritchett search the labyrinthine basement for a control panel. Sara becomes separated from Eddie and is nearly pulled into a tank of blood by a doppelgänger impersonating him. Melissa disappears, leaving behind a trail of blood and a camcorder showing her apparent murder. Price visits his assistant Schechter, who is overseeing the party stunts, but finds him horribly mutilated. On the surveillance monitor he sees an apparition of Dr. Vannacutt armed with a bloody saw.
Evelyn seemingly dies in front of the others, strapped to an electroshock therapy table. Price pulls a gun on the guests, demanding to know who killed his wife, before they turn on him and lock him inside the "Saturation Chamber", an archaic zoetrope device that Vannacutt used to treat schizophrenics. Blackburn volunteers to guard Price. When the others leave, he turns the chamber on, leaving Price to be tortured by the moving images. In Vannacutt's office, Sara and Eddie find a portrait of the hospital's staff and realize that the Prices and invited party guests, with the exception of Blackburn, are descendants of the five survivors of the 1931 fire. Sara surmises that the spirits hacked Price's computer and altered the guest list.
Blackburn and Evelyn are revealed to be lovers who faked Evelyn's death, plotting to frame Price and hoping one of the guests will kill him in self-defense. Fearing the guests are not yet motivated to turn on Price, Evelyn kills Blackburn, then frees a delirious Price. Sara, Eddie, and Pritchett discover Evelyn's body is missing and return to the chamber, where they find Blackburn's decapitated corpse. After Sara shoots Price in the basement, Evelyn comes to gloat over his body, but Price, protected by a bulletproof vest and posing as dead, attacks her. As they scuffle, Evelyn is thrown through a decaying door, unleashing an evil, amorphous entity composed of the spirits of the house.
The shape-shifting entity consumes Evelyn, killing her and adding her spirit to its mass. Price then discovers Melissa's dismembered body. The entity pursues Price up the staircase before engulfing Pritchett. Price has a sudden realization that the attic might house the mechanisms used to operate the lockdown system and flees there, followed by Sara and Eddie. Price opens an iron window guard in the attic, then sacrifices himself to give the others time to flee. Sara narrowly escapes, but the entity traps Eddie inside.
As the entity menaces Eddie, he reveals he was adopted and, like Sara, not a descendent of the hospital staff. Pritchett's ghost opens the window guard, allowing Eddie to escape. Seated on the ledge, Eddie and Sara find an envelope containing all five checks, made out to cash and signed by Price. The two laugh hysterically before wondering how to get down from the ledge.
In a black-and-white post-credits scene, the spirits of the 1931 patients are seen torturing the Prices, presumably doomed to eternal damnation in the afterlife.
Cast
Themes Writing in Contemporary North American Film Directors (2002), academic Reynold Humphries cites House on Haunted Hill as stylistically harkening back to numerous horror and monster films of the 1930s, including Frankenstein (1931), Island of Lost Souls (1932), and The Old Dark House (also 1932), contrasted against the more graphic elements of contemporary horror films. Humphries concludes: "At the same time, the marked contrast seems to be a parody of postmodernism, where a play with form tends to eradicate context and history. The film itself... represents the return of the repressed of history in the monstrous form of the spirit of the insane, back to exact vengeance from the descendants of the families responsible for their torture. That art is not just a game for wealthy drones is an important theme of this effective, frightening, and decidedly nasty movie."
Academic Sharon Packer cites the film's inclusion of medical torture of the criminally insane as a prominent theme, citing its basis on real-life incidents, including human experiments conducted by the Nazis: "The backdrop of human experimentation that was once conducted in psychiatric asylums and in official Nazi medical experiments deserves attention, since these details are based on more than a kernel of truth. However, by including these scenes in a film about ghosts and supernatural visitations, the historical truth is softened, and the spectator may leave the movie theater convinced that allegations of unethical psychiatric experiments are just as unreal as the ghost story itself." However, Packer concedes that the film "pulls no punches" in its depictions of human medical experimentation.
Production Development
House on Haunted Hill was the first film produced by American production company Dark Castle Entertainment, formed in 1998 by producers Joel Silver and Gilbert Adler, and filmmaker Robert Zemeckis. Silver and Zemeckis, collaborators on the Tales from the Crypt television series, had discussed remaking William Castle's 1959 film as early as 1997, with Zemeckis citing it among his favorite films.
Zemeckis proposed a remake of the film to Castle's daughter, Terry, who herself had already considered shopping a remake to film studios. However, her father had sold the rights to the film years prior in order to pay for her college tuition. In the intervening decades since the film's release, the rights had passed from Allied Artists to Lorimar before the latter's catalogue was absorbed by Warner Bros. "There were no ancillary rights," Castle said, "so I went to Warner Bros., which owns it now. They told me that Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis had been talking about making a modern version of the picture." Terry Castle would ultimately serve as co-producer on the remake.
Director William Malone was also a fan of the original film, which he had seen as a child. Malone and screenwriter Dick Beebe developed a screenplay over a period of a year and a half, based on the original by Robb White. According to Malone, he wrote approximately twenty percent of the screenplay, though he did not take a writing credit on it. Co-producer Adler noted that he felt the film was "totally different" from the original, but retained its spirit in terms of "how we're telling the story, and the basic tenets of the story itself. We contemporize it as much as possible." The unethical psychiatry methods and experimental procedures featured in the film were loosely based on medical experiments conducted by the Nazis.
Unlike in the 1959 film, in which a supernatural element was only hinted at (and ultimately revealed to be a ruse), the reality of paranormal forces attacking the party attendees was made explicit in Beebe's screenplay.
Casting
Geoffrey Rush signed on to appear as Steven Price, the theme park mogul in the film. The Price character name, as well as some of the character's overall personality and mannerisms, are references to actor Vincent Price, who portrayed the same character—named "Frederick Loren"—in the original film. Malone stated that Rush was committed to the material and took the role seriously. Rush modeled the look of the character after film director John Waters, wearing a distinct pencil moustache, and avoided watching the original film as he did not want his portrayal to be influenced by Vincent Price's performance. Elizabeth Hurley was initially considered for the role of Evelyn Price, but by February 1999, Famke Janssen was ultimately cast in the part.
Taye Diggs was subsequently cast as Eddie, the ex-professional baseball player attending the party, and agreed to appear in the film after Rush signed onto the project. Ali Larter, who had previously completed Varsity Blues (1999), was cast as Sara Wolfe, a woman who poses as her ex-boss, film executive Jennifer Jensen; the film marked Larter's third screen appearance. Commenting on Diggs' and Larter's casting, producer Gil Adler said: "When you are watching a horror film, you want to root for someone you can sympathize with. Taye and Ali have the charm and wit to be able to pull those emotions from the audience with their performances."
Saturday Night Live star Chris Kattan was cast as Watson Pritchett, the caretaker of the building. Terry Castle stated that Kattan was cast in the part for the sake of comic relief, and that the filmmakers allowed Kattan to "just [be] who he is." Bridgette Wilson was cast in the role of Melissa Marr, a disgraced television host, and was chosen by Malone who appreciated her comic timing, likening her to a "living Warner Bros. cartoon [character]." In casting Peter Gallagher as Donald Blackburn, a duplicitous physician, Malone commented that he brought "an evil quality" portraying "a guy who is something completely different than what he initially seems."