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The House on Haunted Hill

The House on Haunted Hill

List Price: $9.97
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: NIGHTMARES!!!~
Review: HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL IS THE BEST HORROR MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN! YES IT IS A LITTLE MENTAL AT TIMES, BUT IT IS THE ONLY MOVIE THAT HAS ACTUALLY SCARED ME! I LOVE SCARY MOVIES AND I ALWAYS WILL BUT NONE OF THEM HAD EVER SCARED ME UNTIL I SAW HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL! MY FRIENDS AND I SAW IT TOGETHER AND WE ALL HAD NIGHTMARES FOR WEEKS! BUT FOR SOME WIERD REASON, EVERYTIME WE SEE EACH OTHER WE ALL WANT TO WATCH THIS MOVIE! IT IS VERY ADDICTIVE AND SCARY! I LOVED IT! CHIRS KATTAN IS EXTREMELY TALENTED IN THIS MOVIE AND HE PROVIDED MANY INSIDE JOKES WITH MY FRIENDS AND I SUCH AS "WE'RE OUTTA SCOTCH THANKS TO YOU ...!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: What Could Have Been...
Review: Although CGI effects have done wonders for the film industry and have expanded the filmaker's ability to tell vast stories (Titanic is a good example), they have virtually ruined the horror movie business. Case in point is House on Haunted Hill: what begins as a genuinely scary film (the camcorder sequence, roaming the lower depths of the burned-out asylum) degrades into a typical "Hollywood" ending, complete with utterly ridiculous CG monster. All one has to do is watch either of the modern Mummy films to learn the shortcomings of CGI - overly lit, comic-looking monsters that aren't really "there."

What ever happened to presence? Give me a hokey-looking rubber-suited ghoul over an overly-lit CG Pokeman any day. Blair Witch worked so well because of what we couldn't see. CG monsters such as the "evil" at the end of HoHH seem created to appease the masses of moviegoers that demand finality in the form of big explosions and the hero's witticism ("time to chill out, baby"). Even Harryhausen's stop-motion creatures seemed more real.

And why, for God's sake, does the film turn into a music video about halfway through, with the (what was it.. Rob Zombie?) heavy metal track.

All in all, this seems like a film that at one point had a vision (perhaps that of the director or screenwriter), but succumbed to the pressures of the studio executives. It's a shame, because HoHH has some of the best imagery I've seen in a horror film, but shifts gears into a different type of movie halfway through. What a pity that the art of film has generally become one of lowest-common denominator.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Plot should've been partygoers VS. GHOSTS, not each other
Review: I have to admit something here; I don't watch horror movies regularly. That's for a couple different reasons. First, I think the genre has over-gored itself into mindless predictability. Second, it seems tougher and tougher to come up with a truly scary plot that American audiences haven't seen yet. Third, the characters are always beautiful and stupid and get themselves into trouble. Herein lies the problem with 'House On Haunted Hill', yet at the same time, I found myself fast-forwarding and rewinding to see the parts I thought were truly captivating.

To start off with, the beginning, where the Dr. Richard Bejamin Vannacut's hideous experiment is interrupted permanently by revolting lunatics, was one I kept coming back to. Don't ask me why. The phony newsreel afterwards kept me interested, especially the film of the massacre. But the story receded into boring predictability until the five characters--Chris Kattan, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Brigette Wilson and Famke Janssen, among others--stupidly go looking for the master switch for the lockdown device that caused all the deaths in the 1931 massacre and fire. In the BASEMENT. In a horror film, you NEVER go in the basement, but these idiots went and did it anyway.
Okay, I can live with that. The basement set is EXCELLENT. It's everything you'd expect an abandoned state mental facility to look like after nearly 70 years of neglect. There are all kinds of old wheechairs, crutches, gurneys, funky doors with paint peeling off--the queen is the electroshock room with its electrical buzz and lots of big switches and antique, esoteric machinery. One side note here--if there was a fire and everything burned, where's the smoke damage? More importantly, why is there equipment everywhere if the whole place went up in smoke? Minor point, I guess.
Anyway, the five of them wander around in the labyrinth basement and all the while, Chris Kattan's character gives the guided tour of the place. Ali Larter's character follows a ghost she thinks is Taye Diggs' character and puts her hands inside a huge vat full of stage blood, only to find Taye Diggs coming in the room (possibly the morgue?) to say 'What the heck are you doing?'. Ali Larter, meet Ghost Number One.
It isn't too long before the second victim meets her maker. Brigette Wilson, in looking for weird stuff to videotape, stumbles into the room where Vannacut's last experiment happened. While the room itself is quiet and empty, Wilson's character's recorder tells a different story. The camera sees the experiment taking place just like in 1931 when Wilson's character looks at its screen. The killer moment is when the staff of three stop the experiment, turn slowly toward Wilson's character and give her a blank look. OOOH!! I rewound and fast-forwarded a couple times for that one. After that, though, is some Marylin Mansonesque animation and Wilson's character disappears in a terrific scream, only to be found much later as a display of severed limbs mounted inside a case.
The best scene in the whole film is when Geoffrey Rush's character, Price, slowly starts on a head trip inside Vannacut's chamber. The man bouncing the ball merges and jumps out, only to laugh psychotically as Price tries to hold on to the bars. Next thing, he's on a gurney with some grotesque metal restraint clamped to his head, being whisked away to a room by a nurse who says something about being sick. He's then wrapped in laytex and put inside a tank of water, which he swims away from, past a dead girl spewing blood out her mouth. We see him inside the chamber twitching away like a crazy.
This is the kind of thing that, in one form or another, should have happened to every character in the film. If it's a plot that takes place inside a shuttered mental hospital and the ghots of the patients and staff that died in the melee or the fire are mad and want revenge, we should see more of them than a computerized blob at the end. MUCH more. ... Both Ali and Taye should have flashbacks of some kind after going through something like this, but no. Instead, they laugh, count their millions and wonder 'How are we going to get down?'.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It'll haunt you FOREVER
Review: This movie whas a real scary movie, the end whas weak but if you see the movie a couple of times you'll get use to the weak end and then it's changing in a good end.
There where many spoilers but you'll have to do with this.
It whas great though !!!!!!!!!!
A REAL SCARY HORROR MOVIE, A DEFINATE CLASSIC !!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Gore is not Horror
Review: If you have a strong stomach for violence and gore, then you can get past the prologue. After the prologue, the scenes at the amusement park were the best along with a fine imitation of Vincement Price. It all went downhill from there with stupid dialog, over the top special effects, a badly executed plot, and characters we care nothing for. I guess it would be high-art for those who watched all of the Friday the Thirteen sequels. I began to root for the ghost. See the original instead.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Nothing scary here
Review: House On Haunted Hill wanted to be very good. Good opening credits (although it rips-off Se7en); Jeffrey Combs (Herbert West from 'Re-Animator' and general B-horror movie legend) as a mad doctor; a good, young cast--nice chemistry between Ali Larter and Taye Diggs; and Robert Zemekis and Joel Silver producing. But despite all this House on Haunted Hill is a pathetic disappointment. It stays fairly close to the 1958 original, but Dick Beebe's script is simply lacking in scares. Nothing is remotely scary here. In fact, the only thing that is creepy and unnerving in the whole movie is the film's opening of the lunantic revolt in the hospital. Think House on Haunted Hill is gory? THIS MOVIE IS NOT GORY -- not by a longshot. If you want gore try 'Zombie,' 'The Evil Dead' (the original) or 'Dead Alive.' In fact, almost any B-horror movie is more gory than House on Haunted Hill. Those new to the horror movies may get a kick out of House on Haunted Hill, but fans of the genre will be completely disappointed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a good gory movie
Review: When i watched this movies, i thought the beginnning was very promising. As the movie progressed it became even more gory! this movie is good if you want a fast, gory,fun but scary movie to watch for fun then this is it. But if you want movies with a actual plot line a characters that acually have characters then don't watch this! their reactions are predictable and the guy that owns the house becomes more annoying and stupid as the movies goes on.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Finally a movie with enough gore for me!
Review: I am the hugest horror movie fan! Suspense is good but what i mostly love is GORE! I have seen a lot of movies that I think will be really gory but was only dissapointed. Then I saw this movie and I was extremely impressed. No there really much of a story line but survival was vital. Everytime I see the first scene with the crazy serial killer doctor, I want to call him hitler. I am not scared that easily but I was on the very edge of my seat. If you are a person that enjoys a gory movie this is perfect for you. Hopefully if you watch this movie you arn't eating or have a mistake. I was eating at the time but I had to put the burger down after the scene with the mangled mutated bodies in green tanks. This is a really good movie to see with a bunch of friends or on Halloween.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A scary treat!
Review: This is a scary movie. I loved it. The DVd is great with good features. You will like it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Scariest Movie I Have Ever, Ever Seen!
Review: "The Blair Witch Project." "The Haunting." Let's face it. Today's horror films can really take on a terrible state. But then I saw "House on Haunted Hill..."

"House on Haunted Hill," starring Geoffrey Rush (Shine), Chris Kattan (SNL), and Taye Diggs (How Stella Got Her Groove Back) is an incredibly horrifying story about a 1930's psychotic doctor that works in a mental asylum. After performing a great number of awful and extremely gruesome experiments on the patients, the mental defectives "rebel" and murder the doctor and his staff in gory and graphic ways (the patients are then burned to death after the asylum is lit on fire and the lock system becomes effective. Only five patients make it out alive).

Almost seventy years later, the burned down asylum is given a good fix-up and turned into "an externally appealing mansion." Geoffrey Rush now owns the house, and offers five people the chance to spend the night in the haunted mansion. If they survive the night, they will be awarded with one million dollars. However, each person, one by one, discovers the evil lurking in the house, caused by the spirits of the dead doctors and mental patients, and survival suddenly becomes about 100 times more important than one million dollars.

I would definitely not recommend "House on Haunted Hill" to anyone with a weak stomach. The strong and intense scenes of blood and gore are constant. There isn't one scene without some act of violence, and gory results. I saw this film on Halloween, of all days, in the movie theatre. After an hour into the film, I literally found myself shoving away my popcorn. I felt sick to my stomach after seeing some of those scenes. The worst one is when a security guard gets his face "dug-out" by the evil spirit of the crazy doctor. Other incredibly disgusting scenes include one in which the five contestants are taking a tour through the house. They come across the basement (an area Geoffrey Rush didn't even know about), but they find no light. One of the contestants finds a lever, and pulls it out. The good news is the room suddenly becomes illuminated. The bad news is, the people find themselves surrounded not only by light, but by body parts, intestines, and bloody, as well as skinless corpses being preserved in glass tanks full of green water. The movie scared me pretty badly.

The movie offers a very effective beginning and ending, as well as a numerous amount of occurrences and elements that will make you jump about five feet off your seat. The movie also offers a great number of disturbing scenes containing footage of the psychotic doctor, his staff, and/or his patients (such as the beginning, in which the patients take over). Other disturbing scenes offer flashbacks that show some of the tortures practiced upon the mental patients. Some scenes were so bad, I found myself having to look at the floor. Hey, I told you the movie was gross.

The ending is where the computer graphics play their part. Although the "ghost-composed blob" at the end does look somewhat computerized, I still found THAT scary! I just found everything about this movie scary. I think the makers of this movie were expecting reactions similar to mine, so they put Kattan in the movie for humor and jokes. However, the jokes are ineffective in this movie. You don't find yourself laughing when watching this film. You just find yourself gagging.

After watching this movie, I found myself suffering from a number of symptoms, such as not being able to sleep without lights for the next two weeks, and loss of appetite. I also found myself quickly turning around and glancing behind me every chance I could. One thing's for sure. "House on Haunted Hill" sure changed the way I look at horror movies, and if you favor gore, and love to be scared, then rent this movie. Watching it will probably be the greatest experience of your life.

-Rated "R" for strong and constant scenes of bloody horror violence and gore, some language and nudity


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