House on Haunted Hill (1999)

House on Haunted Hill (1999)

In director William Malone's elaborate horror remake of the classic William Castle film - House on Haunted Hill (1959), it was also followed by a sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007) in unrated and R-rated versions, featuring an unrelated search for the Baphomet idol - the cause/source of evil. The credited screenwriter was Dick Beebee basing the script on a story by Robb White. Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver were amongst the film's four producers.

With a budget of 37ドル million, the film grossed 40ドル.8 million (domestic) and 42ドル.6 million (worldwide). The 93 minute film received a nomination for "Worst Remake" by The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards organization. The film's tagline presented the plot's challenge:

"Six strangers have the chance to make 1,000,000ドル EACH. All they have to do is make it through the night...alive."

• it opened with a disturbing scene (that would be replayed later) in a hellish sanatorium - the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane in Los Angeles. Shown in flashback on October 11, 1931, an evil mass-murdering doctor, Dr. Richard Benjamin Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs), was surgically cutting into a mentally-sick patient (without anesthesia) in an operating room, while one of the nurses filmed the operation

• meanwhile, a group of the asylum's rebellious mentally-disturbed patients revolted in an attempt to escape; in the surgical room, Vannacutt was interrupted by the riot; crazed patients attacked the medical staff; one of the orderly-office clerks was stabbed through the neck with three freshly-sharpened pencils
• Dr. Vannacutt had prepared for such an eventuality; he had rigged the hospital with a fail-safe device - numerous iron gates, shutters and bars that covered the windows, controlled through a series of cranks, levers, and rotating gears; he activated the system to lock down the hospital (for 12 hours); fires broke out inside the building, and everyone (including inmates, staff, and doctors) except for five people, died in the inferno, creating a "Hospital of Horror" and "Sanitarium of Slaughter" (charred remains were shown); later, as the facility was being reconstructed, it was nicknamed the "House on Haunted Hill"
• years later in the present day, a sadistic, smirking, and demented Steven Price (Geoffrey Rush, replacing Vincent Price in the original film) was introduced

• he was an eccentric millionaire and horror-themed amusement park entrepreneur and inventor; he had acquired a spoiled trophy wife who loved to indulge in spectacular parties - and was making plans to celebrate with a Halloween birthday-party:
  • Evelyn Stockard Price (Famke Janssen) - Price's much hated, vain, cynical and callous estranged wife, a quarreling and venomous femme fatale
• in the film's first sequence, Evelyn was bathing in her sudsy tub; she watched a TV program titled "Terrifying But True!!" that provided jerky, TV newsreel footage showing the asylum's lethal past as a torture institution for the criminally insane; the program's narrator (Peter Graves) intoned:
  • "The site of this carnage still exists today, restored almost to its original state. But it has yet to be inhabited because some say, 'The spirits of Vannacutt and his victims still live within the walls of the house on haunted hill.'"
• she decided it would be the perfect site for her party; Price agreed to organize and host Evelyn's party, and had rented the abandoned asylum from its current owner/caretaker - Watson Pritchett (Chris Kattan); he had decided that the guests for the party would be invited to spend the night in the sealed-up Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, a haunted house; he offered a reward of 1ドル million for each one who survived the night; if any one of the guests didn't make it, their million would be split among the survivors
• the names of five party guests, strangers to each other yet all invited to Evelyn's birthday - with an invitation promising "Terror, Humiliation, Perhaps Murder" - were switched twice, reflective of their extremely toxic marriage; Price shredded Evelyn's original lengthy guest list and created his own guest list, although his list - in his absence - was also mysteriously deleted from his laptop; some mysterious and invisible unnatural force (evil spirits or ghosts of the house?) took over and typed in five names
• the final guest list included only one person on Evelyn's original list - Dr. Blackburn; most of them didn't know each other, but were all enticed by the 1ドル million dollar offer on the invitation:
  • Dr. Donald W. Blackburn (Peter Gallagher), an arrogant and stand-offish physician, who was having an affair with Price's wife Evelyn
  • Eddie Baker (Taye Diggs), an ex-pro baseball player, orphaned and adopted
  • Melissa Margaret Marr (Bridgette Wilson), a former TV game-show hostess and aspiring TV star-personality; she had brought her own video-camera device
  • Jennifer Jenzen (Ali Larter), actually her real name was Sara Wolfe, a quiet production assistant masquerading as her former boss - an executive VP; she stole her boss' invitation to win the 1ドル million dollar prize
  • Watson Pritchett, the timid and nervous owner/caretaker of "The House on Haunted Hill"; his grandfather previously owned the mansion

• the guests arrived and the party started, as they were led inside the facility, revealed to be cold and dusty; installed on the ceiling of the main lobby was a striking, massive stained-glass window, representing demons; suddenly, it crashed down and dropped onto the guests, nearly killing Evelyn with one giant shard of glass; she accused Price of trying to kill her, but Price argued back that it was a stunt created by Evelyn to engender sympathy for her
• Pritchett demanded to be paid his rent and then released, but it was too late according to Price; the building went into a major lockdown for a period of twelve hours, with heavy metal plates descending, sealing and covering over every window and door; there was no cell service or connection to the outside world; lots of nightmarish images and incidents would began to appear and develop
• during a sequence for a search to find the security system controls to switch off or unlock the house gates and/or to escape from the roof, a group of guests first descended a dark corridor into the basement area; Eddie, Jennifer, and Pritchett made a horrible discovery - display cases of mummified remains of experimented-upon patients, a shock-therapy room with rusty tables, and an old sensory-deprivation chamber (a zoetropic device with flickering lights and stroboscopic illusions to overload a person's senses and cause insanity)
• in its creepiest moment, Jennifer reached her arms into a large round vat of gooey blood to rescue Eddie (who appeared possessed and had jumped in); as a mysterious force tried to drag her in, the "real Eddie" suddenly approached her from behind and saved her - he asked: "What the hell are you doing?"
• while wandering around in Dr. Vannacutt's empty operating room area in the basement, Melissa began to shoot video footage with her video camera, and realized that the camera was picking up haunting images from the past (sadistic blood-soaked surgeons operating on patients without anesthesia) that she couldn't see with the naked eye; she was attacked by a monstrous creature (wrapped in bandages); her screams brought the others to her aid; they found the room covered with fresh blood from floor to ceiling and Melissa was missing (and presumed dead)
• meanwhile, it was revealed that Price's technical employee Carl Schechter (Max Perlich) was at security controls and monitors observing the guests with closed-circuit video cameras; he had also been hired to create various traps and scares, but before he had implemented any of the tricks, he claimed to Price (who ordered him to hold off) that they were happening on their own; after Melissa's incident in the basement, Price went to the control room to chastise Carl, where he discovered that half of Schechter's entire face torn off - only a big bloody hole was visible
• moments later, Evelyn was found strapped to the electro-shock therapy table, and electrocuted with a terrifying and presumably lethal jolt of electricity that killed her; an enraged and paranoid Price pulled out a gun and accused the guests of creating a conspiracy; Eddie grabbed the gun away and shot Price in the shoulder

• to protect the group from Price's threats, he was locked and protectively sealed in the gigantic, revolving sensory overload isolation or "saturation chamber"; Blackburn volunteered to guard the diabolical chamber, and once others left, he turned up the chamber's power to full capacity, causing Price (wearing goggles) inside to begin to hallucinate

• Price experienced unsettling, weird psychotic images of a vest-wearing, maniacally-laughing man bouncing a red ball; a nude woman hanging from straps appeared to be tortured, and a man whose face was in a vice-like mask; Price envisioned himself as one of the Institute's patients, with visions of his experience of drowning in a sealed vault of water; he was able to swim toward a nude underwater female spewing blood from her mouth before her head turned into a grotesque shape; Price's head became the red bouncing ball in the hands of his devilishly-grinning and deadly wife
• meanwhile, Sara and Eddie entered Dr. Vannacutt's desk area and patient files, revealing one of the plot's major twists when they discovered a framed picture of the Institute's staff - the CLASS OF 1931. The guests for the party, apparently selected by the house's vengeful spirits to collect a blood debt, specifically included five descendants-relatives of members of Vannacutt's original 1931 staff who hadn't perished in the early 1930s fire - they included everyone "responsible" for the fiery conflagration:
  • RUTHE ANN STOCKARD - Electroshock (The Head Nurse)
  • ADOLPHUS JENZEN - Electroshock
  • FRANKLIN BAKER - Pathology
  • THOMAS STEVEN PRICE - Electrotherapy
  • JASPER MARR
• the only exception was Dr. Blackburn - none of his ancestors had worked there; Marr, Sara, and Eddie realized that the angry, "pissed" house itself was an evil entity (representing all of the evil spirits in the house), who had deliberately invited them there to be punished
• another twist was next - Blackburn and Evelyn were conspiring together to bring down her detested husband; she had faked her death by electrocution; their plan was to kill all of the guests, frame Price and drive him insane; Price would be accused of mass murder, thus allowing Evelyn to acquire and inherit his fortune; however, the devious and psychotic Evelyn selfishly didn't want to share any of the inheritance with anyone, so she went ahead and killed Blackburn (by thrusting a scalpel through his chest); Evelyn released the half-mad Price from the chamber, then placed the dismembered parts of Blackburn's body inside, and also hung up his decapitated head
• the survivors now assumed that Price, who had been released from the chamber, was about to kill them one by one; Sara was confronted by Price, and fearing for her life, she shot him multiple times with a gun
• shortly later, Evelyn appeared, approached Price's crumpled body in the basement, and confessed everything to him about her nefarious plans, but then she was stunned to see that he revived - due to his precaution of wearing a Kevlar bullet-proof vest
• in the film's finale, Steven suddenly grabbed Evelyn by the neck, seeking revenge for her selfish plotting; as they scuffled with each other in a monumental struggle, they smashed through an ancient, decaying wooden wall and door - the two had accidentally found a huge hidden chamber, and unwittingly had released a spidery, undulating, shape-shifting "Darkness" - a swirling mass of dark black smoke consisting of the screaming and tortured faces of the Institute's past patients
• they were both approached by the "Darkness" that quickly wrapped its tentacles (of hundreds of souls) around Evelyn and dragged her toward itself; she was assimilated, corroded and consumed by the "Darkness" that literally dissolved and absorbed her
• the black slimy monstrous creature began to spread throughout the corridors of the house, to attack the other surviving members; Price raced off and as he emerged from the locked basement, the "Darkness" swept past him and consumed Pritchett; Price told Sara and Eddie: "The house is alive"
• the group attempted to escape from the house and the "Darkness" by exiting through an attic window (with a heavy metal shutter); Price met his self-sacrificial demise as he attempted to save Sara and was swallowed whole by the massive and raging creature
• only two eventually escaped, Sara and Eddie - they were the only ones not related to people that died in the building years ago; the threatening "Darkness" released Eddie and allowed him through the exit-way, and then disappeared after he claimed that he was not blood-related to his parents:
  • "I had nothing to do with this! I was adopted!"
• the two survivors, hundreds of feet above the ground, noticed an envelope labeled: "For those who survive the night" - enclosed were five cashier's checks for 1ドル million each, made out to "CASH," and signed by Steven Price; but then they asked themselves: "One more thing, how do we get down from here?"

• in the final post-credits epilogue (filmed in jerky black and white), Evelyn was shown being tortured alongside Steven by the dead asylum patients on "the other side"