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The House on Haunted Hill

The House on Haunted Hill

List Price: $9.97
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: House on Haunted Hill
Review: Amazon must add one more rating category: the "black hole," which would be reserved for pictures like this one, which are so poorly done that they rank in minus values. The screen play is rank; any first year drama student could do better. Rather than use the English language to convey emotion, mood, and (even a hint of) intelligence or wit, the writer simply loaded the dialog with the foulest of four letter expletives. The only funny part of the DVD is contained in the interview with the director in which he describes one of the actresses as the typical "girl next door." He must live next to a bordello! Not one of the actors in this film did a creditable job (it's hard to put your heart into vulgar inanity) Special effects are fair; audio and video are very good, but I give this one a "BLACK HOLE."

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Wasn't even Scary
Review: This is a real bad horror movie. Not funny, not scary, just a waste of two hours of my life.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Surprisingly Very Enjoyable DVD
Review: This DVD has feautres on it that will keep you busy for several hours. Although the mini-documentraies are really just 2 minute features telling you how they did certain parts in the film its repeated during the commentary. If you get this DVD, watch the movie (with the volume cranked and all your friends over) then watch the commentary. Dont watch the documentaries until you have watched the commentary becuase most of the info in the documentaries is just repeated through out the commentary. Speaking of commentary, William Malone is ok. There are parts at the begining where he doesnt say anything but then after awhile he gets into it. The Two-Houses documentary is also interesting and its funny when they show the clips from the original version showing the stuff they used to scare people back then. Academy Award winner Geoffery Rush plays his part well and the beautiful Famke Janssen plays her part of his mysterious wife great. Chris Kattan is very good in his role and Peter Gallagher plays his good. The cast is wonderful and the movie is good. If you get this DVD or VHS, stay through the credits. Theres something at the very end of the movie that alot of people missed. But if you do watch it, pay attenton to the scene right before Famke Janssen is introduced. Its pretty neat. Another thing is the deleted scenes. I see why these werent put in, there too slow and boring. But I wish there were more. Theres only three. Well four if you count the re-done version of the first one. Anyway, this movie is one of the best recently made horror movies,and it is a very enjoyable movie to watch with good freinds who dont nitpick stuff. I hate nitpcikers who nitpick during the film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Hanted
Review: I love it i just found out that James Master (SPIKE BUFFY) is in it and i need to see it agian to see him since he is soo FINE

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not bad...but not excellent either.
Review: You know, I wanted to like this movie so bad, but the thing that I kept saying afterwards was "it just didn't do it for me." I didn't go see it opening weekend, because it was supposed to stink so bad, and there were no advance reviews. Then I read some reviews that actually said it was fun, Entertainment Weekly gave it a B- (and unfortunately, gave away a couple big shocks in their d*%$ review), and went.

It started out great. What Geoffrey Rush does for a living is such a great gimmick, and I just wish I hadn't known what would happen. That's why I'm not going into the plot too much in this review. Famke Jansen is nice and nasty as his shrewish wife. Jeffrey Combs plays (YES!) a mad doctor again. Rush also is dressed exactly like Vincent Price, looks like him, and acts like James Woods (seriously, EW said that too -- I wonder if they didn't have him in mind. Rush looks the part much more, though).

Though for some reason, it just didn't scare me that much. Lots of cool gory parts, neat, trippy imagery, not too predictable. But I don't think I jumped once, and I really wanted to. Probably, if reviews I read hadn't given a few great moments away, I would have had more fun -- also if they audience was having more fun. There was only one part where people in the theater jumped, and it was a "fake" jump (you know, like "AAAAAGH! Oh, it's you. You scared the hell outta me" type of cheap jump). I don't know what I would have done differently, and usually after a movie I don't like, I have very specific ideas and opinions about the various places the film makers went wrong, and what they should have done instead. Other than the ending being kind of anticlimactic, I don't know.

I will say this: it beat the hell out of "The Haunting" remake that came out this summer, though that's not saying much. The first 5 minutes alone were 20 times better and scarier than the whole Haunting POS put together. Definitely superior. Oh well, you could do worse. The opening scenes alone are worth watching the movie for. Better than most of the junky horror movies put out last year, and like I said, MUCH better than, say, "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer".

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Very entertaining and fun, and pretty scary, too.
Review: 1999's two haunted house thrillers were extremely different. One was pretentious, cheesy, overbloated, and unscary (The Haunting). The other is trashy, but fun, entertaining, and a scary good time. It's obvious the better one is House on Haunted Hill, which features more scares in one of its 2-minutes segments than all of the remake of The Haunting combined. Plus, the addition of two over-the-top and droll performances from Geoffrey Rush and Chris Kattan are an addendum. Sure, the script is no good, but William Malone's scare tactics are very effective and the cast is game, if not particularly sharp. Definitely worthy of a late night viewing.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Truely chilling DVD
Review: I saw this film in theaters and loved it, so I bought the DVD. I'm so glad I did! Not only is this movie terrifying, but oh so original. At first I found the ending disapointing too, but at the second viewing it made sense. I am a huge Vincent Price fan, so I had my doubts, but the terror this film supplied more than convinced me. The DVD has extra features like deleted scenes (and they're good ones, one is a scene with scary zombies and the other two contain scenes with Debi Mazer and the guy that plays Riley on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the trailers for the original movie and remake, and a neat little documentary comparing them with scenes from the original (which are hilarious!) I also got to see the creepy scene featuring the party's hosts and the ghosts after the credits rolled, which I missed on the big screen. You can also play a neat little game if your computer is set up for it. If you even liked this film even a little bit, do yourself a favor and purchase or rent this DVD!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Had To Buy It
Review: After missing the films release at the cinema i decided to buy the film anyway as my friends had said that it was very good, and i have to agree with them. I hadnt seen the original so this was a totaly new film to me and i loved it all the way through. The storyline is there, there are plenty of deaths, the special effects are great and the cast certainly earned their pay.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: You'll be on the edge of your seat ...
Review: "House on Haunted Hill" was almost as incredible of a remake as Psycho was. While the dialog does differ from the original movie and most of the scenes have been updated to modern times, it was superbly re-mastered. The concept of the house once being an old mental institution was a brilliant addition compared to the Frank Lloyd Wright house used in the original movie. The DVD is packed with extra scenes including those starring Debbie Mazaar that never made it in the movie. Also included are excellent commentaries from the producers, behind-the-scenes features on how the re-make was created as well as scenes from the original movie. While it's not what I would call "scary", it will keep you on the edge of your seat with its continual plot twists. A definite must-have for every DVD collection.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Capable remake
Review: House on Haunted Hill (William Malone, 1989)

My first thought as the credits rolled was "I didn't just see Geoffrey Rush's name go by, did I?" But yes, there he is in all his sadistic glory. Rush, who seems to have something of an affection for playing sadists, plays "Steven H. Price" (and he even grew a Vincent-esque mustache... beautiful!), reprising Vincent Price's Frederick Loren role in the 1958 original. Bond girl Famke Janssen is his long-suffering wife.

If you haven't been in a cave since 1958, you know the drill: the seemingly evil and certainly creepy host offers a group of characters a million bucks apiece to spend the night in a supposedly haunted house... if they make it out alive. (cue swelling creepy music) Of course, the survivors will split the cash of anyone who doesn't make it, and oh, by the way, here are some things you can use to murder your fellow competitors. The twist this time: the house is a former asylum for the criminally insane, run by a doctor who should have been a patient (many-times-typecast Jeffrey Combs, the title character from Re-animator). This gives director William Malone the chance to do some wonderful things with vintage-looking atrocity footage that's truly creepy. The best parts of this movie are the all-too-brief shots of Combs and his ghostly comrades doing very nasty things, usually just off-camera, to poor innocent victims.

And here's the weird thing. This is a capable adaptation of a film that really wasn't the best thing Vincent Price ever did. It's got some wonderful scenes, a cadre of talented young actors from the Oscar-winning Rush to rising star Taye Diggs to (do I need to say it?) teen heartthrob Ali Larter (Final Destination) who turn in good performances. So what's wrong with this picture? Why is it no better than the similarly-themed The Haunting, released only a month before? Well, okay, I won't go that far-- it's better than The Haunting ever dreamed of being, and with nowhere near as high-powered a cast. But still, all the elements here don't want to gel, and the effects-laden climax is... well, think The Haunting; the story gets lost in all the million spent on ghosties, ghoulies, and long-leggetie beasties. But it doesn't happen until very late in the film this time, at least.

Oh, yeah, and it's got Max Perlich. He's only onscreen for a total of about forty-five seconds, but forty-five seconds of the thoroughly brilliant Perlich (Brody on Homicide: Life on the Street) is better than nothing. ** 1/2


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