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HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL Explained: The Antidote to Bly Manor

The not-so-recent premiere of The Haunting of Bly Manor left most viewers rather disappointed, especially after the excellent The Haunting of Hill House by the same creators.

Krzysztof Walecki

4 February 2025

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL Explained: The Antidote to Bly Manor

I am not as harsh in my assessment, but I also believe that Mike Flanagan and his team did not put as much effort into adapting (or blending) The Turn of the Screw and other ghost stories by Henry James as they did two years earlier with Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. The existential sorrow of unfulfilled, abruptly ended lives and the tragedy of those left behind once again serve as the foundation of the horror, but this time, it does not work—the sense of dread has evaporated. In a story about a haunted house, this is almost unforgivable. I appreciate Flanagan’s ambition, but sometimes what viewers want most in such tales is a simple formula based on effectively scaring characters trapped in a house. My disappointment with the Netflix series reminded me of a film that, in many ways, is its complete opposite, House on Haunted Hill.

House on Haunted Hill, Geoffrey Rush

In 1999, Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler founded Dark Castle Entertainment, a division of Silver Pictures, named after William Castle, a creator of B-movie horror films from the 1950s and 60s. The trio had previously worked together on the television series Tales from the Crypt, which also had its roots in mid-century horror, originating in EC Comics. Their new venture could thus be seen as a continuation of their interest in a specific subgenre of horror—bloody, grotesque, but also full of dark humor. With solid budgets ranging between 20 and 40 million dollars, well-known actors in the cast, flashy visuals, and above all, a love for grand-scale macabre, Dark Castle aimed to offer audiences—at least in theory—a more appealing brand of horror than what was then dominating American cinemas (this was a time when slashers had regained popularity thanks to Scream, while lavish gothic horror films had fallen out of favor). Their debut production was House on Haunted Hill, directed by William Malone.

House on Haunted Hill

This loose remake of Castle’s 1959 film follows a similar premise to the original—a group of strangers receives an invitation to spend the night in a haunted house for a generous sum of money (in the old version, it was $10,000 each; in the new one, an even million). However, they do not realize that their host and his wife despise each other so much that the guests might have more to fear from the toxic couple than from the ghosts. On the other hand, the house itself is genuinely unsettling—its structure almost seems to rise from the hillside, but it is its infamous history, as a psychiatric hospital until a patient uprising and the massacre of nearly the entire staff in the 1930s, that truly instills fear. Soon, the four guests, the estate’s caretaker, and those who supposedly invited them find themselves locked inside as part of a social experiment.

House on Haunted Hill, Famke Janssen, Peter Gallagher, Geoffrey Rush, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter

The film opens with a title sequence reminiscent of the stop-motion work of the Quay Brothers, accompanied by Don Davis’s superbly eerie main theme. This sets the tone for the rest of the film, which almost immediately suggests the presence of a sinister, supernatural force residing in the titular house. However, Dick Beebe’s screenplay (based on an original script by Robb White) retains the question of the ghosts’ actual involvement for a long time, playing with the twist from the 1959 version while also developing the character played in the remake by Geoffrey Rush.

House on Haunted Hill

In the original, the host of the macabre gathering was played by Vincent Price, an icon of horror cinema—a performer who could imbue his characters with an almost aristocratic demeanor while never abandoning irony and self-awareness, even when portraying villains. His theatricality was a perfect fit for Roger Corman’s adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s works, as well as for Castle’s B-movie repertoire. In the remake, the same role is played by Rush, and he could be the sole reason to watch the new version. His Stephen Price takes not only his surname but also his appearance from his predecessor (even though Rush originally intended to model his character after John Waters) and adopts the same kind of performative acting, putting on a show for an audience that does not even realize it is watching one. At the same time, this is something that the protagonist could have inherited from the original film’s director. William Castle was more of a showman than a filmmaker—he offered life insurance policies that would pay out if a viewer died of fright during his films, suspended flying skeletons over audiences, and installed vibrating devices under theater seats. On-screen, Price is exactly that kind of brilliant entrepreneur-showman who makes a living by scaring people.

House on Haunted Hill, Taye Diggs

It is no surprise that the viewer gets the impression that the entire night of terror has been pre-planned by the host, and even when he seems surprised by certain developments, it might just be part of his act to make the situation seem more convincing. On the other hand, the idea to throw a party at the House on Haunted Hill came from his wife, the ice-cold Evelyn (Famke Janssen, at her most venomous), so perhaps she is the one pulling all the strings. The sadomasochistic dynamic between the two works best in the entire film because—just like with the ghosts—it raises questions. It is unclear how far the couple will go in their hatred for each other or whether that very hatred is what fuels their relationship. No wonder the invited guests largely serve as background to the Prices’ personal war, except perhaps for Saturday Night Live alum Chris Kattan, playing the cowardly, shrill, and increasingly drunk Pritchett, the caretaker who is convinced they will all be dead by dawn.

House on Haunted Hill

Malone maintains a balance for much of the film between its thick atmosphere—heightened by Davis’s score, Rick Bota’s cinematography, and the fantastic production design by David F. Klassen, Richard F. Mays, and Lauri Gaffin—and the entertainment value of the premise, which plants a seed of doubt as to whether there is anything supernatural at play beyond the Prices themselves. Unfortunately, once the question is definitively answered, the spectacle becomes more exhausting than thrilling, the humor dissipates, the music-video-style editing becomes grating, and shifting the focus from the Prices to their guests—played by Peter Gallagher, Bridgette Wilson, and especially Ali Larter and Taye Diggs—is underwhelming. This is not the actors’ fault but the screenplay’s, which gives them nothing substantial to work with. It is a particular waste of Re-Animator star Jeffrey Combs, who appears in a minor role as the ghastly Dr. Vannacutt. Rush maintains his class until the end, though even he eventually has to bow to the overwhelming flood of CGI effects, the best of which is a living Rorschach test—unfortunately, as a digital effect, it is not remotely frightening.

House on Haunted Hill, Famke Janssen, Peter Gallagher, Geoffrey Rush, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter

House on Haunted Hill serves as a template for future Dark Castle productions, with all the pros and cons that come with it. It is loud, flashy, and not always logical (the guest list is intentional, though one name should not be there), yet its visual design is impressive, and the mindless fun of exploring haunted houses with not-so-bright characters is undeniable. The same applies to Thirteen Ghosts, Ghost Ship, House of Wax, and Gothika (though Dark Castle’s best horror film is Orphan, which significantly deviates from the standard formula in favor of psychological horror without supernatural elements). Still, their first film stands out, thanks to Rush’s charmingly subversive performance, which calls back to the far more playful original.

House on Haunted Hill, Chris Kattan, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter

There remains a nostalgic fondness for Dark Castle films, though their disposable nature does not necessarily invite repeated viewings. Although the company never officially shut down, several years have passed since their last production (interestingly, it was not even a horror film but Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney). They attempted to revive the genre by bringing B-movie horror to the big screen with lavish budgets, but their music-video aesthetics often overshadowed even the best-crafted ghosts, not to mention the barely developed human characters. However, the upcoming Halloween might be the perfect time to revisit—or discover for the first time—how much fun Dark Castle films can be. Certainly more than Bly Manor.

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