Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

House on Haunted Hill Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 7, 2018

This may sound like an insult, but it’s actually said with a certain amount of admiration — there’s an undeniably cheesy quality to many of William Castle’s horror outings, and in fact it’s that very cheese that often makes the films so undeniably entertaining. Castle was of course as much of a marketer, an unrepentant “showman” in the venerable sense of that word, as he was anything else, and that often cheeky acumen is what tended to generate such “buzz” about his features. One of the most memorable marketing tactics Castle employed was for the original 1959 release of House on Haunted Hill, where Castle arranged for a complicated pulley system to fly a skeleton over the audience. It of course sounds incredibly quaint to more jaded audiences raised on horror films that exploit incredibly graphic imagery, but even with a new and supposedly improved approach that does occasionally tip over into at least slightly explicit gore, the 1999 version of House on Haunted Hill ends up being neither quaint nor frankly anywhere near as much fun as Castle’s original.

This remake perhaps unnecessarily creates a whole framing device involving what was even in 1999 the cliché of a mental asylum where the managing doctor is an out of control madman named Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs). Vannacutt has the unfortunate, near Josef Mengele like, propensity of experimenting on his inmates, and the film documents him operating on a poor soul who has not been given the benefit of anaesthesia. Perhaps understandably, the inmates revolt, with a conflagration ensuing that consumes all but five survivors (Vannacutt not among them). The erstwhile Vannacutt Institute for the Criminally Insane is the “stand in” for the haunted mansion of the original 1959 film.

Scheming Evelyn Stockard-Price (Famke Janssen) sees a low rent tv episode on the Vannacutt Institution, one deliberately made out to be something like Unexplained Mysteries and which is hosted by Peter Graves, and decides that’s where she wants her upcoming birthday bash to be held. Already this is kind of subtly different than the original conception and may put a certain lie to supposed logic in terms of who is gaming whom in this version (I’ll attempt not to post outright spoilers, but there are subterfuges at play here that anyone who has seen the original will know about). Evelyn’s husband is amusement park impresario Steven (Geoffrey Rush), who is in a way a stand in for William Castle here, an over the top huckster type (that’s said with some respect for a great American tradition, by the way). But, again — the whole amusement park angle is an arguably needless addition here, played for a brief vignette early in the film that is admittedly kind of fun and even funny in some of its willful misdirection, but which really figures into the overall plot mechanics exactly zero ways.

The film gets at least a little closer to the original once invitations to Evelyn’s party go out (but here again a certain seemingly supernatural element intrudes in terms of who ends up being invited, an element that is not part of the original formulation) and a collection of folks show up at the Vannacutt Institute to hopefully make it through the night unscathed and collect a cool million dollar prize. The Vannacutt Institute has been turned into a private residence now managed by Watson Pritchett (Chris Kattan), in what is a kinda sorta nod to Castle’s original version. That said, in terms of the other characters assembled, it’s a motley crew rather dissimilar in many ways to the 1959 version’s gaggle of folks. There are some probably expected updates, with a tip of the skull to the “contemporary” by having one of the group be a kind of fame seeking former star who is documenting the whole thing via her minicam. Another contemporary element is perhaps just a bit more subliminal, with Taye Diggs’ Eddie Baker and Ali Larter’s Sara Wolfe developing a quasi-romantic relationship as the film progresses.

Had House on Haunted Hill continued to mine the kind of deadpan humor that’s part of the brief amusement park vignette early in the film, I think it might have succeeded a bit more, especially since taking that route might have distanced it more effectively from memories of the first version. This outing does its best to up the ante in terms of visual effects (as any lover of Castle films will know, sometimes the “special” effects in his films were a little low rent themselves), but the film never really develops either any sustained tension or humor. Rush is campily fun as a husband who is at least as scheming as his wife, as is Janssen as the wife, but much of the rest of the cast really comes off as “red shirts”, interchangeable victims whose fates are foregone conclusions almost from the get go.

House on Haunted Hill Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

House on Haunted Hill is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. The packaging touts a "new 2K scan from the original film elements" without specifying exactly what those "original film elements" are (original negative? interpositive? print?), but the bottom line is this is by and large a nice looking transfer, though occasionally some of the darker scenes definitely suffer from general murk and lack of detail (see screenshot 19 for just one example). The palette is nicely suffused in virtually all of the color scenes (as can be gleaned from some of the screenshots accompanying this review, there are occasional sidebars in black and white), and detail levels are definitely helped by the continued use of extreme close-ups throughout the film. Some of the special effects work may unintentionally harken back to original Castle productions by being just a bit, well, cheesy at times. Grain generally resolves quite organically, though there are occasional slightly splotchy moments, not necessarily limited to low light conditions.

House on Haunted Hill Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

House on Haunted Hill features an intermittently aggressive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, one which gets some "oomph" from elements like the big gears that close all the windows in the institution, or from some of the dangers the "guests" experience as the story progresses. The film has a kind of audacious source cue in the form of Marilyn Manson's "cover" of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams", and that fills the surround channels quite nicely. Despite the bulk of the film taking place indoors, there is consistent placement of ambient environmental sounds in the surround channels, though many of these effects tend to be rather subtle and transitory. Dialogue is presented clearly and cleanly throughout the track.

House on Haunted Hill Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interview with Director William Malone (1080i; 37:30) is an enjoyable and wide ranging piece that gets into some history with regard to both the original film and the remake.


• Interview with Composer Don Davis (1080p; 9:40) is another fun interview with the composer talking about some different styles he sought to bring to the project.


• Interview with Visual Effects Supervisor Robert Skotak (1080i; 18:42) gets into some of the nuts and bolts of the effects work, while also bringing in some "real world" assessments about how to pay for various things.


• Concept Art and Storyboard Gallery (1080i; 2:53)


• Behind the Scenes Visual FX Gallery (1080i; 5:44)


• Movie Stills and Poster Gallery (1080i; 4:37)


• A Tale of Two Houses - Vintage Featurette (1080i; 19:14) looks at some of the differences and similarities between the two films.


• Behind the Visual FX - Vintage Featurette (1080i; 7:01)


• Deleted Scenes (1080i; 12:04) looks like another vintage piece, as evidenced by an included interview with director Malone.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080i; 2:13)


• TV Spots (1080i; 1:05)


• Audio Commentary with Director William Malone can be found under the Audio Menu.

House on Haunted Hill Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's some goofy fun to be had in this version of House on Haunted Hill, but I personally wish the film had continued with the deadpan black humor that informs the early vignette featuring Price at his amusement park. There is some deadpan humor scattered throughout the film, but too often it tries to toe a middle line between more traditional gore outings and something with a bit more of a winking smirk, and it's not always an organic feeling combination. Rush and Janssen are hammily amusing as the bickering marrieds, but some of the rest of the cast comes off as kind of bland. Technical merits are generally solid, and as usual Scream Factory has assembled some very appealing supplements for those considering a purchase.