Coroner’s Corner
I Found My Thrill on Haunted Hill
by John Bikowski
Just in time for Halloween, the latest Hollywood bandwagon seemed to be the good ol’ fashioned ghost story, as evidenced by the Sixth Sense, the Haunting and finally, House on Haunted Hill. The Sixth Sense was an excellent idea with some creepy moments of the needy walking dead. The Haunting, however, tried to improve on the original ’60s version with computer imaging. They deserve credit for a few effective scenes, such as the giant blood-puking Jesus statue that grabs and drowns a woman, but overall, the excessive use of gargantuan, ghostly faces takes The Haunting out of the fear realm and into that of Scooby Doo – ultimately, a visual curiosity: appealing to the eye, but quickly forgotten.
The other remake, House on Haunted Hill, is not so easily dismissed. The original William Castle and Vincent Price classic concerned a wealthy eccentric who offered $10,000 to five people if they could spend the night in his mansion of horrors. Intertwined with their plight is the murderous tension between Price and his wife which manages to provide some twists. This 1958 film showcased one of the scariest scenes I’d ever seen (albeit as a young kid). A gnarly-looking blind woman comes sniveling and clutching out of the darkness as she sneaks up on a potential victimette. The harmless psycho-biddy seems to glide as if she were a ghost and I remember thinking, “Oh crap, I’m going to be seeing her tonight in my bed – and not for pleasure, I can assure you.”
Before I discuss the remake, be forewarned that I’ll mention things you may not want to read before viewing the film. Basically, don’t get pissed off at me if I ruin some of the surprises. Speaking of surprises, the original film sprung “Emergo” on its audiences – a giant skeleton flew down during the movie. Why don’t they pull that stuff anymore? Well, let me with the following statement: The first 70 minutes of the remake are outstanding: Scary, unsettling, unpredictable… cool shit. The last 20 minutes, however, reek so badly I doubled over in pain and almost started to cry. All I could muster on the way to the exit was, “Whyyyy???!”
Even the opening credits (a la Seven) are creepy – quick flashes of nightmarish things, like baby heads, and an eerie title track. You know, kind of like a Tool video. The story opens with a scene of graphic surgery on a criminally psychotic man who’s screaming in agony. We see the possibly rusty scalpel split his stomach skin as the blood disgorges. It seems that a doctor with radical ideas is running the Bedlam-like insane asylum in which he tortures patients to study or cure them. Unfortunately for the doctor (played by Jeffrey Combs from Re-Animator) and his assistants, there’s a revolt. They’re ripped to pieces and the place goes up in flames, leaving the mist of evil to linger inside the house.
In present day, the Vincent Price role is updated to a thrill park designer who wants to have a party in the abandoned house (so he can stage his wife’s murder). His wife realizes his intentions, but in her infinite wisdom, agrees to attend in hopes of turning the tables. The guests who arrive are not the ones invited, but are nonetheless offered a million bucks apiece to last the night. Also mysterious is the fact that no one knows who enabled the rusty old locking mechanism that’s trapped everyone inside. And then – Look out! – the skylight comes crashing down and nearly dices his lovely wife. These ghostly happenings manage to keep the guests and viewers wondering whether or not the host is screwing with them. Well, once you learn that things are way out of the host’s control, the film manages to throw some genuine scares at you. Complementing the sense of impending doom is one of SNL‘s Butabe Brothers. As the caretaker, he’s a completely paranoid freak who’s determined that everyone will be mutilated.
The film manages to successfully tap into many of the things that scare us: dark, musty basement corridors, things that seem to change shape in the dim light, forced electrical shock therapy, impromptu surgery with no anesthesia, quick jerky movements of ghostly freaks, and lots of blood. One memorable scene has a woman reporter documenting the old operating rooms on her camcorder. She hears a blood-curdling ruckus in an empty room and passes the camera by. As the zoomfinder focuses on the table, she sees the psychotic Dr. Vonnegut and a couple of nurses forcibly cutting a patient. She redirects the camera in disbelief, but there’s no one there. She slowly raises the lens back to the table, and sure enough, there they are again. But this time, they slowly turn to look at her before advancing forward. Well, let’s just say that every last drop of her blood is plastered from floor to ceiling. There’s something about ghosts that can cut into your flesh that I find unsettling…
Now the film is moving along enjoyably from scare to scare until the host and his wife begin to wrestle. They inadvertently break through the wall of the room in which the mayhem from the film’s beginning took place. In doing so, they release a large cloud of pure evil that seems to’ve been flatulated from the very bowels of Satan himself. The film quickly detours into a computer (de)generated vomit-heap of a cat and mouse game between said “fart cloud” and the remaining guests. A Butabe ghost intervenes to save the day, and the survivors are left high and dry with all the millions of dollars they earned. The film does so well, yet ends so poorly, I feel disappointed.
