I happened upon this slice and dice horror flick while staying in a sinister David Lynch-like hotel in Milwaukee, called The Knickerbocker. Being the Halloween season, leaves falling and trees getting bare and melancholy at twilight, I found the combination of a creepy old hotel room and this cheesy flick a perfect combination.
What made it more surreal for me was the fact that I had stuffed foam earplugs into my ears to block out the noise through the paper thin walls. I watched this remake of House on Haunted Hill without having to endure the undoubtedly stupid dialogue (that was a no- brainer) or the gratuitous scare soundtrack and simply watch the cinematography and the actors faces.
I don't think there was much good acting going on, though Geoffrey Rush does well as a creepy lounge-lizard type. I caught a few lines here and there so I got the general drift of the story.
Peter Gallagher had entered the downward slop of his iffy career. He is slaughtered horribly at the end which is a fitting end for him. Taye Diggs provides some male sex appeal but has two facial expressions... bewildered and bug-eyed and sexy come-on-baby.
The bimbos, for such is what they are, are portrayed by two, count 'em, two busty blondes. One, Ali Larter, seems to have some acting ability, the other Bridgette Wilson, does not. The latter is slaughtered even more horribly than Peter Gallagher, and we don't care.
Some bit player has his face bitten off and his head emptied like a broken chocolate Easter egg, and someone named Chris Kattan spends lots of time scarfing down bottles of whisky. He dies oddly, as does the brunette bimbo played by someone named Fanke Janssen. They both get sucked up into some kind of creeping cobweb with tentacles. I think Fanke plays the Evil that inhabits the house but don't hold me to that, I don't care.
This flick has absolutely nothing akin to the much-loved Vincent Price version made in 1958 which possesses all the charm of the innocent Rank/Hammer years. This 1999 remake takes place in something that resembles Bat Man's high tech Fritz Lang Castle on top of a Transylvanian craggy peak by the North Sea, but the actors are all glib, vulgar American idiots, excepting Geoffrey Rush though he appears to be trying to be like them in this early film performance before he got famous.
The f/x are very good, in their limited way. The cinematography has catchy little weird moments when the film is sped up. The sets are OK but most of the action takes place in a great manner hall with a great big bar alternately with the maze-like basement.
The stupid characters keep returning to the same underground mad scientist laboratory where they all get knocked off one by one, except for the black guy, the smart blonde bimbo and Geoffrey Rush who's fate is dropped unceremoniously in to limbo by the script's failure to come to a proper ending. Could the dim-witted producers have truly envisioned a sequel? Who cares.
I'll never see this entertaining time-waster again unless I stumble upon it at future Halloween AMC festivals. So grab a bottle of gin, rent a room at a creepy urban hotel in a second tier American Northern industrial city on a wet, dark autumn night and have fun.
What made it more surreal for me was the fact that I had stuffed foam earplugs into my ears to block out the noise through the paper thin walls. I watched this remake of House on Haunted Hill without having to endure the undoubtedly stupid dialogue (that was a no- brainer) or the gratuitous scare soundtrack and simply watch the cinematography and the actors faces.
I don't think there was much good acting going on, though Geoffrey Rush does well as a creepy lounge-lizard type. I caught a few lines here and there so I got the general drift of the story.
Peter Gallagher had entered the downward slop of his iffy career. He is slaughtered horribly at the end which is a fitting end for him. Taye Diggs provides some male sex appeal but has two facial expressions... bewildered and bug-eyed and sexy come-on-baby.
The bimbos, for such is what they are, are portrayed by two, count 'em, two busty blondes. One, Ali Larter, seems to have some acting ability, the other Bridgette Wilson, does not. The latter is slaughtered even more horribly than Peter Gallagher, and we don't care.
Some bit player has his face bitten off and his head emptied like a broken chocolate Easter egg, and someone named Chris Kattan spends lots of time scarfing down bottles of whisky. He dies oddly, as does the brunette bimbo played by someone named Fanke Janssen. They both get sucked up into some kind of creeping cobweb with tentacles. I think Fanke plays the Evil that inhabits the house but don't hold me to that, I don't care.
This flick has absolutely nothing akin to the much-loved Vincent Price version made in 1958 which possesses all the charm of the innocent Rank/Hammer years. This 1999 remake takes place in something that resembles Bat Man's high tech Fritz Lang Castle on top of a Transylvanian craggy peak by the North Sea, but the actors are all glib, vulgar American idiots, excepting Geoffrey Rush though he appears to be trying to be like them in this early film performance before he got famous.
The f/x are very good, in their limited way. The cinematography has catchy little weird moments when the film is sped up. The sets are OK but most of the action takes place in a great manner hall with a great big bar alternately with the maze-like basement.
The stupid characters keep returning to the same underground mad scientist laboratory where they all get knocked off one by one, except for the black guy, the smart blonde bimbo and Geoffrey Rush who's fate is dropped unceremoniously in to limbo by the script's failure to come to a proper ending. Could the dim-witted producers have truly envisioned a sequel? Who cares.
I'll never see this entertaining time-waster again unless I stumble upon it at future Halloween AMC festivals. So grab a bottle of gin, rent a room at a creepy urban hotel in a second tier American Northern industrial city on a wet, dark autumn night and have fun.