{"id":5427,"date":"2009-10-26T13:12:20","date_gmt":"2009-10-26T21:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=5427"},"modified":"2009-10-26T13:12:33","modified_gmt":"2009-10-26T21:12:33","slug":"house-on-haunted-hill-william-malone-1999-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=5427","title":{"rendered":"House on Haunted Hill (William Malone, 1999): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by William Conlin<\/a>. Viewed on DVD.<\/p>\n

\"\" With Halloween rapidly approaching I found myself wanting to watch a good horror movie. I thought back to when I was 12 years old and remembered seeing a movie that was really scary at the time. With that in mind, I decided to watch the remake of Vincent Price\u2019s classic ghost story House on Haunted Hill<\/em><\/a> again… Sadly, that was a terrible mistake.<\/p>\n

House on Haunted Hill<\/em> presents us with a millionaire, his cutthroat trophy wife, the manic owner of a haunted house and five unassuming strangers trapped in an abandoned psychiatric hospital turned haunted mansion. The millionaire (Geoffrey Price) tells each person that if they survive the night, they will be awarded $1,000,000. Each accepts but when the guests start dying one by one, they begin to wonder if any of them will live to see the money.<\/p>\n

This movie disappointed me on so many levels. I could see why it scared me as a child but no more than halfway through I was already laughing at the poor style and filmmaking. This film pulls out all the stops with clich\u00e9s but still manages to fall short. Whether it\u2019s Dick Beebe\u2019s mangled screenplay or William Malone\u2019s manic direction, I don\u2019t know, but the one thing that for certain is I left this film with a sour taste in my mouth.<\/p>\n

The bright spot of the film comes from its talented group of performers. Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen are great as bickering blue bloods and Ali Larter and Taye Diggs are well placed as the guests who get more than they bargained for. The only person who appears out of place is Saturday Night Live comedian Chris Kattan, whose eccentric portrayal of the home\u2019s owner leaves viewers laughing when they should be trembling.<\/p>\n

Though this film certainly fulfills a person\u2019s expected horror movie bloodlust, it fails to truly give you the thrills you hope for when watching a great horror film. My verdict is pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by William Conlin. Viewed on DVD. With Halloween rapidly approaching I found myself wanting to watch a good horror movie. I thought back to when I was 12 years old and remembered seeing a movie that was really scary at the time. With that in mind, I decided to watch the remake of Vincent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}