Amazon.co.uk Review
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, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
One of my fav films.......2008-01-14
This is one of my favourite films ever. I decided to watch it because I saw it on the TV schedule but accidently missed it so I rented it which was a rip off costing me £4 when I could buy the DVD for £5. I thought it was amazing especially the bit at the beginning at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I have been on that Hulk ride which was called Terror Incognita in the film which was really good to relate to. I love all the actors and actresses in the film and think that the storyline is really good. All in all I think that this is a great film which stands out from other Horror movies and is #1.
An excellent remake...........2007-12-30
I usually steer clear of remakes, especially in this case as I love the orginal, but this film really is a great film. Its more of a re-telling than a straight remake, not sure about the dodgy Vincent Price impersonator though.
A CREEPY FILM.......2007-11-03
In 1931, the Vanacutt Psychiatric Institute was the scene of a violent takeover by the criminals inside. Today, it serves as the House on Haunted Hill, and after seeing a television special on it, Evelyn, (Famke Janssen) the wife of illustrious Amusement Park designer Steven Price, (Geoffrey Rush) decides to hold her birthday party there. When the guests arrive, Jennifer Jensen, (Ali Larter) Donald Blackburn, (Peter Gallagher) Eddie Baker, (Taye Diggs) Melissa Marr, (Brigitte Wilson) are taken up to the house by Pritchett, (Chris Kattan) the owner. Steven tells the guests that the house is rigged for them to spend the night trapped inside, and the only way out is to survive until morning. With the only way out in the cellar, the group splits up, with Jennifer and Eddie going into the basement with Steven and Pritchett and the others staying put. After several incidents make the guests suspicious of one another, more clues are revealed about the true intentions of the party list and why the house seems alive.
The Good News: As is usual with these types of movies, the house is the best part. It's back-story, about the house being an insane asylum, allows it to have a simple explanation to blame for the events that transpire. Even though it has an unlikely scenario, the fact that it doesn't try to use a cliché as a way of letting the ghosts reek havoc in the house is a nice touch. The havoc that they reap is more psychological as well, as there are so few deaths in the film that it makes them be more interested in scaring them. Characters would enter a room talking to someone, then there would be some strange noise off in the distance, they would turn around and no one was around. One of the classics is Jennifer wandering into a room looking for Eddie, and she sees him jump into a giant vat of blood, and she goes over and tries to pull him out. He reappears in the room asking her what's wrong, then something inside the vat nearly pulls Jennifer into the vat. A classic example of the ghosts merely reeking havoc. The ghosts themselves are so rarely seen that we never get much of a good look at them, and it follows the great tradition of films like "The Haunting" where the ghosts are off-screen and we see only their attempts to drive the guests mad. We get lights coming on with no one around to flick them on, noises that come from machines off in the distance, and the eeriness of the walls within the house are combined to make the atmosphere really unnerving. It doesn't have to have the ghosts in there a lot to be creepy. One of the only times we see the ghosts is also a classic scare: one of the characters is wandering around videotaping the house when they stumble upon a strange room. Wielding the camera up, on the video display is a group of ghosts performing surgery on another ghost, which is the opening scene of the movie. Moving the camera away reveals nothing in the room, and they do it again, and we see the ghosts appear on the display once again, then they look at the camera, and their faces are so distorted and the look they have sends chills down your spine. They do have some killing instincts, and the killings are pretty graphic. We get two decapitations, a very violent electrocution, and one person turned into stone and blown into pieces by a gust of wind. Hardly any of it is seen, but the giant pools of blood seen at the scene of the crime are pretty gory.
The Bad News: A lot of people criticize this one for it's gaping plot holes, and granted some of them are pretty easy to spot. One of the most obvious, that the ghosts can actually hack onto a computer system miles away from the house and changing the list, is very ridiculous and was the only scene where I felt insulted at the lack of respect for the audience. There are others, but that was the only one I couldn't live with. I also hoped that Chris Kattan would be killed off soon into the movie, as he is even more annoying than anything post-SNL. It was a sad shame that he wasn't.
The Final Verdict: Aside from Chris Kattan's OTT performance and some gaping plot holes, this isn't that bad of a movie. It faithfully adapts some of the more memorable parts from original (sadly, the scene where the woman pops up isn't here) but it doesn't need knowledge of the original to be entertaining. If you can live with the plot holes, this isn't a bad one to pick up.
House on Haunted Hill (1999).......2007-10-17
Like "The Haunting" released in the same year but a lot better produced, this effectively creepy horror-house remake deals mostly with up-dated effects and red-herrings than efficient story-telling in one of the best remakes to grace the silver screen.
The simplistic storyline sets around theme park developer Geoffrey Rush (playing a Vincent Price-like role) offering a group of strangers $1 million to spend the night in a 1930s mansion that holds a shocking secret...
The stars all play along with great efficiency (especially Famke Janssen as his estranged wife who's only after his fortune) alongside the terrific CGI effects and scenes of gore and violence (one in particular deals with someone finding another dismembered and on display!). As well as those trinkets, the score plays very well in tackling your nerves and fears while the ending result's surprisingly unexpected...
To finish off, if you like most well-done and thought-out remakes (like I do), then add this delicious slice of scares and gore to your collection because it'll feel empty without it!
Have I missed something?.......2007-10-03
Blimey, what a terrible film. About as bad as it gets really. I was misled by other reviewers who described this as one of the scariest films they had ever seen. This was about as scary as father christmas. The acting was dreadful, even the usually superb Geoffrey Rush was hamming it up in a particularly annoying way. Please believe me that this is a waste of an hour and a half of your life. You'd be better watching the washing machine spin- far more entertaining and probably more scary, (particularly if there's a red sock in the wash!)
Amazon.co.uk Review
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, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
One of my fav films.......2008-01-14
This is one of my favourite films ever. I decided to watch it because I saw it on the TV schedule but accidently missed it so I rented it which was a rip off costing me £4 when I could buy the DVD for £5. I thought it was amazing especially the bit at the beginning at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I have been on that Hulk ride which was called Terror Incognita in the film which was really good to relate to. I love all the actors and actresses in the film and think that the storyline is really good. All in all I think that this is a great film which stands out from other Horror movies and is #1.
An excellent remake...........2007-12-30
I usually steer clear of remakes, especially in this case as I love the orginal, but this film really is a great film. Its more of a re-telling than a straight remake, not sure about the dodgy Vincent Price impersonator though.
A CREEPY FILM.......2007-11-03
In 1931, the Vanacutt Psychiatric Institute was the scene of a violent takeover by the criminals inside. Today, it serves as the House on Haunted Hill, and after seeing a television special on it, Evelyn, (Famke Janssen) the wife of illustrious Amusement Park designer Steven Price, (Geoffrey Rush) decides to hold her birthday party there. When the guests arrive, Jennifer Jensen, (Ali Larter) Donald Blackburn, (Peter Gallagher) Eddie Baker, (Taye Diggs) Melissa Marr, (Brigitte Wilson) are taken up to the house by Pritchett, (Chris Kattan) the owner. Steven tells the guests that the house is rigged for them to spend the night trapped inside, and the only way out is to survive until morning. With the only way out in the cellar, the group splits up, with Jennifer and Eddie going into the basement with Steven and Pritchett and the others staying put. After several incidents make the guests suspicious of one another, more clues are revealed about the true intentions of the party list and why the house seems alive.
The Good News: As is usual with these types of movies, the house is the best part. It's back-story, about the house being an insane asylum, allows it to have a simple explanation to blame for the events that transpire. Even though it has an unlikely scenario, the fact that it doesn't try to use a cliché as a way of letting the ghosts reek havoc in the house is a nice touch. The havoc that they reap is more psychological as well, as there are so few deaths in the film that it makes them be more interested in scaring them. Characters would enter a room talking to someone, then there would be some strange noise off in the distance, they would turn around and no one was around. One of the classics is Jennifer wandering into a room looking for Eddie, and she sees him jump into a giant vat of blood, and she goes over and tries to pull him out. He reappears in the room asking her what's wrong, then something inside the vat nearly pulls Jennifer into the vat. A classic example of the ghosts merely reeking havoc. The ghosts themselves are so rarely seen that we never get much of a good look at them, and it follows the great tradition of films like "The Haunting" where the ghosts are off-screen and we see only their attempts to drive the guests mad. We get lights coming on with no one around to flick them on, noises that come from machines off in the distance, and the eeriness of the walls within the house are combined to make the atmosphere really unnerving. It doesn't have to have the ghosts in there a lot to be creepy. One of the only times we see the ghosts is also a classic scare: one of the characters is wandering around videotaping the house when they stumble upon a strange room. Wielding the camera up, on the video display is a group of ghosts performing surgery on another ghost, which is the opening scene of the movie. Moving the camera away reveals nothing in the room, and they do it again, and we see the ghosts appear on the display once again, then they look at the camera, and their faces are so distorted and the look they have sends chills down your spine. They do have some killing instincts, and the killings are pretty graphic. We get two decapitations, a very violent electrocution, and one person turned into stone and blown into pieces by a gust of wind. Hardly any of it is seen, but the giant pools of blood seen at the scene of the crime are pretty gory.
The Bad News: A lot of people criticize this one for it's gaping plot holes, and granted some of them are pretty easy to spot. One of the most obvious, that the ghosts can actually hack onto a computer system miles away from the house and changing the list, is very ridiculous and was the only scene where I felt insulted at the lack of respect for the audience. There are others, but that was the only one I couldn't live with. I also hoped that Chris Kattan would be killed off soon into the movie, as he is even more annoying than anything post-SNL. It was a sad shame that he wasn't.
The Final Verdict: Aside from Chris Kattan's OTT performance and some gaping plot holes, this isn't that bad of a movie. It faithfully adapts some of the more memorable parts from original (sadly, the scene where the woman pops up isn't here) but it doesn't need knowledge of the original to be entertaining. If you can live with the plot holes, this isn't a bad one to pick up.
House on Haunted Hill (1999).......2007-10-17
Like "The Haunting" released in the same year but a lot better produced, this effectively creepy horror-house remake deals mostly with up-dated effects and red-herrings than efficient story-telling in one of the best remakes to grace the silver screen.
The simplistic storyline sets around theme park developer Geoffrey Rush (playing a Vincent Price-like role) offering a group of strangers $1 million to spend the night in a 1930s mansion that holds a shocking secret...
The stars all play along with great efficiency (especially Famke Janssen as his estranged wife who's only after his fortune) alongside the terrific CGI effects and scenes of gore and violence (one in particular deals with someone finding another dismembered and on display!). As well as those trinkets, the score plays very well in tackling your nerves and fears while the ending result's surprisingly unexpected...
To finish off, if you like most well-done and thought-out remakes (like I do), then add this delicious slice of scares and gore to your collection because it'll feel empty without it!
Have I missed something?.......2007-10-03
Blimey, what a terrible film. About as bad as it gets really. I was misled by other reviewers who described this as one of the scariest films they had ever seen. This was about as scary as father christmas. The acting was dreadful, even the usually superb Geoffrey Rush was hamming it up in a particularly annoying way. Please believe me that this is a waste of an hour and a half of your life. You'd be better watching the washing machine spin- far more entertaining and probably more scary, (particularly if there's a red sock in the wash!)
Amazon.co.uk Review
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, Amazon.com
Customer Reviews:
One of my fav films.......2008-01-14
This is one of my favourite films ever. I decided to watch it because I saw it on the TV schedule but accidently missed it so I rented it which was a rip off costing me £4 when I could buy the DVD for £5. I thought it was amazing especially the bit at the beginning at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. I have been on that Hulk ride which was called Terror Incognita in the film which was really good to relate to. I love all the actors and actresses in the film and think that the storyline is really good. All in all I think that this is a great film which stands out from other Horror movies and is #1.
An excellent remake...........2007-12-30
I usually steer clear of remakes, especially in this case as I love the orginal, but this film really is a great film. Its more of a re-telling than a straight remake, not sure about the dodgy Vincent Price impersonator though.
A CREEPY FILM.......2007-11-03
In 1931, the Vanacutt Psychiatric Institute was the scene of a violent takeover by the criminals inside. Today, it serves as the House on Haunted Hill, and after seeing a television special on it, Evelyn, (Famke Janssen) the wife of illustrious Amusement Park designer Steven Price, (Geoffrey Rush) decides to hold her birthday party there. When the guests arrive, Jennifer Jensen, (Ali Larter) Donald Blackburn, (Peter Gallagher) Eddie Baker, (Taye Diggs) Melissa Marr, (Brigitte Wilson) are taken up to the house by Pritchett, (Chris Kattan) the owner. Steven tells the guests that the house is rigged for them to spend the night trapped inside, and the only way out is to survive until morning. With the only way out in the cellar, the group splits up, with Jennifer and Eddie going into the basement with Steven and Pritchett and the others staying put. After several incidents make the guests suspicious of one another, more clues are revealed about the true intentions of the party list and why the house seems alive.
The Good News: As is usual with these types of movies, the house is the best part. It's back-story, about the house being an insane asylum, allows it to have a simple explanation to blame for the events that transpire. Even though it has an unlikely scenario, the fact that it doesn't try to use a cliché as a way of letting the ghosts reek havoc in the house is a nice touch. The havoc that they reap is more psychological as well, as there are so few deaths in the film that it makes them be more interested in scaring them. Characters would enter a room talking to someone, then there would be some strange noise off in the distance, they would turn around and no one was around. One of the classics is Jennifer wandering into a room looking for Eddie, and she sees him jump into a giant vat of blood, and she goes over and tries to pull him out. He reappears in the room asking her what's wrong, then something inside the vat nearly pulls Jennifer into the vat. A classic example of the ghosts merely reeking havoc. The ghosts themselves are so rarely seen that we never get much of a good look at them, and it follows the great tradition of films like "The Haunting" where the ghosts are off-screen and we see only their attempts to drive the guests mad. We get lights coming on with no one around to flick them on, noises that come from machines off in the distance, and the eeriness of the walls within the house are combined to make the atmosphere really unnerving. It doesn't have to have the ghosts in there a lot to be creepy. One of the only times we see the ghosts is also a classic scare: one of the characters is wandering around videotaping the house when they stumble upon a strange room. Wielding the camera up, on the video display is a group of ghosts performing surgery on another ghost, which is the opening scene of the movie. Moving the camera away reveals nothing in the room, and they do it again, and we see the ghosts appear on the display once again, then they look at the camera, and their faces are so distorted and the look they have sends chills down your spine. They do have some killing instincts, and the killings are pretty graphic. We get two decapitations, a very violent electrocution, and one person turned into stone and blown into pieces by a gust of wind. Hardly any of it is seen, but the giant pools of blood seen at the scene of the crime are pretty gory.
The Bad News: A lot of people criticize this one for it's gaping plot holes, and granted some of them are pretty easy to spot. One of the most obvious, that the ghosts can actually hack onto a computer system miles away from the house and changing the list, is very ridiculous and was the only scene where I felt insulted at the lack of respect for the audience. There are others, but that was the only one I couldn't live with. I also hoped that Chris Kattan would be killed off soon into the movie, as he is even more annoying than anything post-SNL. It was a sad shame that he wasn't.
The Final Verdict: Aside from Chris Kattan's OTT performance and some gaping plot holes, this isn't that bad of a movie. It faithfully adapts some of the more memorable parts from original (sadly, the scene where the woman pops up isn't here) but it doesn't need knowledge of the original to be entertaining. If you can live with the plot holes, this isn't a bad one to pick up.
House on Haunted Hill (1999).......2007-10-17
Like "The Haunting" released in the same year but a lot better produced, this effectively creepy horror-house remake deals mostly with up-dated effects and red-herrings than efficient story-telling in one of the best remakes to grace the silver screen.
The simplistic storyline sets around theme park developer Geoffrey Rush (playing a Vincent Price-like role) offering a group of strangers $1 million to spend the night in a 1930s mansion that holds a shocking secret...
The stars all play along with great efficiency (especially Famke Janssen as his estranged wife who's only after his fortune) alongside the terrific CGI effects and scenes of gore and violence (one in particular deals with someone finding another dismembered and on display!). As well as those trinkets, the score plays very well in tackling your nerves and fears while the ending result's surprisingly unexpected...
To finish off, if you like most well-done and thought-out remakes (like I do), then add this delicious slice of scares and gore to your collection because it'll feel empty without it!
Have I missed something?.......2007-10-03
Blimey, what a terrible film. About as bad as it gets really. I was misled by other reviewers who described this as one of the scariest films they had ever seen. This was about as scary as father christmas. The acting was dreadful, even the usually superb Geoffrey Rush was hamming it up in a particularly annoying way. Please believe me that this is a waste of an hour and a half of your life. You'd be better watching the washing machine spin- far more entertaining and probably more scary, (particularly if there's a red sock in the wash!)
UK DVD:
- Jeepers Creepers [2001]
- Jeepers Creepers 2 [2003]
- Land of the Dead (2005)
- Mary Shelley's Frankenstein [1994]
- Masters Of Horror - Series 2 Vol 2 [2006]
- Nightbreed [1990] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
- Pan's Labyrinth [2006]
- Paradise Lost [2007]
- Phantasm Sphere : The Complete Collection
- Planet Terror [2007]
UK DVD List
UK DVD
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