6.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Unspeakable things happened at the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane- experiments that brought human torture to new depths of depravity... secrets that died with their victims and the practioners of the demonic acts that masqueraded as medicine. Now there are no living witnesses. Nothing survived Dr. Vannacutt's excesses; nothing endures except the building in which they occurred. But that building holds all the secrets of its terrible past. Decades after the Vannacutt Institute was shuttered, five strangers are invited to spend a night there. Their reward is a million dollars each. All they have to do is stay alive. It's going to be a long night.
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Chris KattanHorror | 100% |
Thriller | 21% |
Mystery | 10% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.
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 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.
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.
Collector's Edition
2001
Unrated
2004
Unrated
2007
2005
1959
Theatrical + Unrated Alternate Cut
2007
Unrated Director's Cut
2010
2019
2018
1999
2012
2019
1973
1980
Limited Edition
1979
R-rated Extended Cut
2002
Collector's Edition
1986
Limited Edition | After Dark Horrorfest
2006
2012
2013